The Art of Pretending It Isn't Your Fault
by Contemperina
Summary: Duncan was thrown into the hallway wearing no more than his boxers and dog collar. "Yeah," he replied to the crowd, dodging one of Courtney's projectiles and smirking at his former campmates. "This is EXACTLY what it looks like." A Playa De Losers fic.
1. Never let them catch you sleeping

_A collaboration between: strayphoenix and Contemperina_

Duncan and Courtney's rules for getting through life when you're out a hundred grand, your soul-mate is your worst enemy, karma's out to get you, and for some unknown reason, you don't really care.

* * *

**Rule 1: Never let them catch you sleeping**

Yeti. Chef. Yeti. Back to Chef. Back to the yeti. It was getting lame, stupid, and ugly. _Really_ ugly. Really fast.

Slumped over in the back of the Boat of Losers, Duncan called in the direction of the boat's cabin, cupping his hands around his mouth. "Yo, Hatchet! You can stop now!"

Chef merely grinned and yanked off his head again, revealing Sasquatchinakwa, before turning back to the wheel and steering the Boat of Losers to only God knew where.

The freaking boat looked like it was going to sink before they ever reached dry land! Duncan lay sprawled in the back over a bunch of crates, conveniently pushed together from the last deportee. They were mad uncomfortable, and he was probably going to end up with splinters in awkward places, but he was so dead from the other night's escapades that he couldn't bring himself to care. Plus, it wasn't like there were any other options; he wasn't going to stand for the whole ride, that was for sure. Who knew how long the trip would take? Especially since Duncan had the sneaking suspicion that Chef was just driving him in circles to eat up time and throw off his sense of direction…

Sleeping in the forest last challenge had been brutal, especially since Duncan was a light sleeper from his time in juvy. And then there was the whole _Heather_ thing. He had to admit that, surprisingly, it hadn't been entirely unpleasant—in fact, under any other circumstances, he was sure he'd have gotten a kick out of it. A hot chick curled up against you for the whole night? What living male wouldn't want that?

Duncan, apparently. His conscience—which had started sounding freakishly like Courtney—had been nagging at him in the back of his head for as long as he'd kept awake (which wasn't long considering he'd come in second place in the Awake-a-thon. Pathetic.) Even then, after he'd fallen asleep, it was like there was some bug in the back of his mind, one that wouldn't be impaled with an axe.

Just thinking about that night made him yawn. He was pretty sure he'd had some sort of dream too, but it hadn't stuck with him.

Chef chose that moment to pull off another mask, granting Duncan another minor spazz-attack. "What the hell, Chef?" he cursed from where he'd fallen flat on deck.

"Watch yo' mouth, boy!"

"Try and make me, Captain Crazy!" Dragging himself back onto the crates, he sat and rested his chin in his hands, glaring wearily at the back of Hatchet's masked head. What Duncan really wanted to do was slice his bald head clear off, but that would have taken effort. Plus, Duncan didn't have an axe, and his pocket knife wasn't going to cut it—literally.

He really could have done for a cup of coffee right about then. Duncan had used up all his adrenaline freaking out during the first ten rounds of mask-pulling, and his energy was wearing down low. As he stared at Hatchet, he became vaguely aware of his eyelids dragging shut, and then his head nodding down, and then his torso collapsing, and he'd have to force himself up again before he totally lost consciousness.

He smacked himself in the face a couple of times in an attempt to wake up, pinched his forearms, shook out his legs. He didn't know what to expect when he got to wherever they were headed, but there was no way that he'd be able to face it if he was asleep.

Duncan knew how these shows worked, preying on the weak and defenseless. Ganging up on the new guy in an unfamiliar environment. Attacking the poor fellow before he even had a chance to blink.

Duncan chuckled to himself wryly. He should have copyrighted his tactics.

* * *

"Land ho," Chef announced unenthusiastically from where he stood at the wheel.

Duncan jerked his head up and twisted around to glance over the side of the boat. At first he couldn't see anything beyond the restless waves of the ocean, and he was just about to _politely _inform Hatchet of that fact when a little blotch appeared on the horizon. Propelling himself off the crates, Duncan darted over to the starboard side and squinted into the distance, leaning on the cold metal handrail. A tiny current of pain shot up his arm, and it jerked back from where it had been resting. "Frigging boxes," he muttered, yanking a splinter out of his palm before turning back to the waves.

He watched intently as the little blotch in the distance turned into a bigger blotch, and then an ever bigger blotch, and then an island, and then an island with a square on it, which then turned into a building, and finally into a ritzy hotel-type place. Palm trees decorated the sandy grounds, steadily giving way to correspondingly tropical potted plants, which lead up to a line of solid glass doors, opening into an equally ritzy lobby. It wasn't really his scene, but it would have to do. Anything was better than the island—except for maybe juvy.

"Well, that took long enough," Duncan mumbled as he smoothed out his Mohawk and rubbed some of the sleep from his eyes.

Hatchet turned and leered at him, revealing half a mouthful of decomposing teeth. "You got something to _say_?"

"Uh, yeah." Chef pulled up next to a dock, and Duncan couldn't help but notice that it was in _way_ better shape than the one back on the island. All the boards were still intact (this new island hadn't seen too much chainsaw action, apparently. He could fix that), and there weren't even any barnacles growing on the edges. _Refreshing_. "Where are we?"

Cutting the engine and tying the Boat of Losers to the wooden post on the edge of the dock, Chef began a mechanical speech, obviously performed eighteen times over already: "Welcome to Playa De Losers, a five-star island resort where all the contestants who are voted off the show are sent. Here, you will be treated to three gourmet meals a day plus a snack buffet, a posh room of your own,"—The look on Chef's face conveyed that the words were courtesy of Chris—"all day pool access, and a fully equipped gym, along with many other amenities."

Chef rummaged through a beat up shoe box for a few moments before producing a shiny silver room key from its depths. Duncan made an attempt to snatch it from him, but Chef held it out of his reach. "Here's your room key."

Duncan jumped up and swung at it, but missed.

"Girls are on the second—I mean _third _floor." Chef's mouth formed an out of place smirk. "And boys are on the _second _floor." Using up his last bit of energy, Duncan swung at the key one last time. Hatchet rolled his eyes and dropped it into Duncan's calloused palm. "Enjoy your stay!" he barked. It seemed to be more of an order than a kind wish for the future.

"Hold up, Chef," Duncan called as the man turned to walk away. He grabbed his duffel bag and followed after him. "What time is it?"

"What's it to ya?" Hatchet yanked open one of the towering glass doors and stepped into the darkened lobby, Duncan on his heels.

Duncan quickly tried to take in all his surroundings, if only so he could find his way around in the morning. All the lights had been dimmed for the night, but from what he could see, the lobby was just as swanky as its surroundings. In one corner, a bunch of fluffy chairs so full of stuffing that they looked on the verge of explosion were pushed into a semi-circle around a giant flat screen TV, mounted on the wall.

Several hallways branched off from the lobby in different directions, each labeled with its own sign. Duncan leaned in to read the one nearest him, which boasted, "Fitness Center" in fancy, looped script. Across the room was the reception desk, though it looked abandoned for the night. Duncan turned back to where Chef had gone ahead and ran to catch up with him.

"Isn't there some kind of night staff in this joint?" he queried, his mind already full steam ahead in forming plans of late-night hijinks with DJ and Geoff.

Chef whipped his head around. "And who exactly do you think that night staff would be, little man? Huh?" he asked testily.

Duncan stared at him. "…You?" he tried. Hatchet nodded stiffly and turned down one of the long hallways. (Duncan would later realize that Hatchet being on the night shift meant the man never had the opportunity to sleep, but unfortunately, Duncan never again found the opportunity to ask.)

"That's right, me!" Chef pulled out a clattery key-ring from his apron pocket and stuck a bronze key into one of the hallway doors. "Like Chris would let anything intervene with his _precious_ beauty sleep!" he sneered.

Chef twisted the ancient key around and pushed the door open roughly. Duncan, duly noting that the pair had a highly dysfunctional relationship, attempted to follow him inside the room; Hatchet stopped him with an outstretched hand. "These are my quarters, boy! Find your… _own._" He snickered at the joke before slamming the door in his face.

What was so damn funny? Duncan didn't understand, but he immediately decided he'd be back at that door the next night, pocket-knife at the ready. And it _wouldn't _be just to carve Chef's door.

Duncan's first impression of the resort, besides the fact that it was decidedly and ridiculously ritzy: it was huge. _Excessively_ huge, especially since it would only ever house a maximum of twenty teens, plus Chef Hatchet and whichever camera crew had landed the unpleasant job of working there.

After Chef abandoned him, Duncan had wandered around the maze of hallways for no less than fifteen miserable minutes before finally ending up back in the lobby. Dragging his duffel bag along behind him, he jabbed his finger into the UP arrow next to the elevator and praised the Lord when the doors slid open right away.

His eyes clamped shut as they were met with the blinding, fluorescent lights from the elevator ceiling, not to mention the giant poster of Chris that decorated an entire side of the lift. How was anyone supposed to put up with seeing _that_ every day? If he hadn't been so tired, he would have taken the stairs just to avoid that smile.

Then came the cheesy elevator music, starting up as the doors glided closed. _"Dear Mom and Dad, I'm doing fine…" _What was _that?_ And all those of gay guys at the end_ na na na_-ing to each other? Duncan sniggered at the lameness of it all. _Chumps_. Fortunately, the ride to the second floor wasn't terribly long, and the elevator bumped to a halt before the song got the chance to repeat.

The door opened up to the second floor, revealing a longish hallway extending out to both the left and the right. Thankfully, the light was dimmer there, the wallpaper lit only by a couple of weak, wall-mounted sconces and the light of the moon, which shone through the full-length window on one end of the hall.

Duncan fingered his own key and held it up to a wall-sconce, illuminating his room number, **6G**. Not deeming the **G** important enough to take notice of, Duncan followed a sign on the wall and turned right. Room 6 was the first one he came to, and he gladly unlocked the door and dragged his things inside, letting the door close noiselessly behind him.

Compared to the hall, it was pitch black in the room. Duncan blindly groped at the wall around the door in hopes of finding a light switch, but his fingers met nothing, save the elaborate-feeling wallpaper and a picture frame, which he sent swinging back and forth on whatever screw it was mounted on.

It was then that Duncan was hit with his second impression of the resort: it was hot. Hot as in boilingly, steamingly, _roastingly _hot. It made no sense. (They were still in Canada, after all! At least…he hoped they were.) But then again, the palm trees and sand didn't make sense either; the heat must've been just another part of the tropical theme Chris had cooked up.

Waiting for his eyes to adjust to the all-encompassing darkness, Duncan stripped down to his boxers, kicking off his Converses and appreciating the calm, rhythmic beating of the ceiling fan. He left his clothes and shoes scattered on the floor and then stood to get a proper look at his new surroundings.

To his left was a second door that had been left ajar, leading into the bathroom. Beside it, a shut door. He opened it, revealing a closet, already stocked with clothes. They weren't like his normal garb, but Duncan's sleep-deprived brain didn't think much of it other than making a note to burn whatever prep-boy clothes they'd reserved for him to wear.

Across from the two doors was a gigantic, unmade bed, undoubtedly king-size. Duncan cocked an eyebrow at the covers all strewn about; they _seriously_ needed to hire a cleaning staff that composed of more than Chef Hatchet and a vacuum.

On the far side of the room, opposite from where he stood, was what looked like a huge, floor-to-ceiling window, though it was hidden by plush, maroon curtains. Duncan walked over and pulled them apart slightly, unveiling a view of the pool deck and, beyond that, the shining ocean. It was nice, really, though it wasn't the type of thing he generally appreciated. Eight weeks at Camp Wawanakwa could make a person grateful for the sissy stuff in life.

Taking a second to check out the Man in the Moon, he found himself unable to stifle a yawn. His eyes watered in response, clouding his vision for a moment, but he walked to the bed and blinked the moisture away, ready to dive in for the night. It really _was_ strange that the bed was unmade already, he decided. They really weren't on top of their stuff at that resort…

But, as Duncan's vision cleared, he noticed that not only was the bed unmade—it looked slept in. In fact, it looked like there was a body _right there_, on the side of the bed opposite him. He turned around and threw the curtains open wide, allowing the moonlight to flood the room and light up a female's sleeping figure. _Courtney's_ sleeping figure.

Duncan barely restrained himself from screeching "Crud!" at the top of his lungs. In a panic, he threw himself full force at the curtains in an attempt to close them before the brilliant moonlight disturbed Courtney's sleep, cursing under his breath. Then, he stood frozen against the window, breathing heavily, searching for any signs that he'd awoken her. The cool glass slowly turned warm against the back of his neck, and after a few moments of nothing but his own panicked breathing, Duncan sighed with relief; it looked like he was safe for the time being.

Instantly after, a question rose to the front of his mind: _What was he doing in Courtney's room! _He slapped a palm to his forehead and scolded himself mentally. It all made sense when he thought about it! The preppy clothes in the closet, all of Chef's snickering, the **G** on his key. It probably stood for Girl! So. Freaking. Obvious.

Duncan would have been rampantly pissed at either Chris or Hatchet (but more likely both), but seeing Courtney in "his" bed had given him an adrenaline rush he hadn't been able to afford, and it was taking its toll on his energy level.

Muttering a few more damnations in an undertone, he cautiously walked back to the side of the bed and rested a hand on the cushy mattress, glancing down at Courtney. She was so peaceful asleep; her biting wit and venomous glare had been wiped clean, replaced with a serene expression, her ever-present scowl traded in for an easy smile. _Why can't she be like this all the time? _Duncan wondered briefly, before answering his own question. _Because she wouldn't be as much fun if she were _nice_, Stupid. _That was probably true.

Sleep was desperately trying to overtake Duncan by that point, and Courtney's bed looked _so _comfortable, all those cushy pillows and blankets—such a change from the cabin bunk beds, and, even worse, the forest floor. He laid himself down on top of the bed sheets to mull over his predicament, careful not to cause even the slightest tremor across the mattress.

If Duncan were to wake up Courtney then, in the middle of the night, it would mean death—not an exaggeration. Princess would probably whip out some crazy self-defense junk and take off his head! Still…there were worse ways to die.

As odd as it seemed, she looked prepared for anything, even when she was asleep. And she looked hot too, but she always looked hot, so that was nothing new. She was stripped down to nothing but her tiny night-clothes, no doubt because of the insane heat, but Duncan fought to keep himself from staring. He felt no shame when she was awake and conscious of his eyes on her, but asleep it felt like too much of an invasion of privacy, something only some selfish, creepy pervert would do. It made him feel like a stalker, and that wasn't his type of crime.

_Maybe_, he decided, wrapping his arms behind his head, it would be wiser to just get up and leave, to go sleep on one of the sofas downstairs until he could relocate Chef and force the man to give him his actual room key. _But the lobby's so far away!_ his mind whined in protest. Courtney wouldn't mind if he just stayed there for the night, would she? There _was _a whole layer of sheets between them, after all. Princess could be reasonable. Well, not usually, but maybe if he just…explained himself in the morning…if he just told her…what had happened…then maybe she…would…maybe…

Duncan's body gave out on him before he could finish his thoughts.

* * *

Whoa! Smells like trouble for Duncan…

And now, some ridiculously long-winded notes from your two co-authors, which will be shorter in the near future:

**strayphoenix**: And so begins a great and wondrous voyage into the realm of reality TV fanfiction. (But not really.) This idea originally came from my fanfiction, _Courtney vs. The World,_ in which Courtney gets blackmailed with footage taken in the time she and Duncan were together on Playa De Losers, followed immediately by reading Contemperina's spot-on takes on the TDI cast in _Fill in the Blank,_ after which 2 and 2 made 4. (Or 6. It depends where you live.) We got in touch and thought it would be a fun project to 'ping-pong' (I write, you write, I write, you write, I vanish off the face of the earth, you nag, I write again...) and write a chapter for her _FITB_ story which would tie in to my story as well. As you will learn, that one chapter stuck its tongue out at us and bred like DJ's bunny and turned out far more lengthy, and far, FAR more freaking AWESOME, than either of us intended :) Enjoy!

**Contemperina: **stray pretty much said it all! The writing is going to be as 50/50 as we can make it, and the plotline as well. Stray came to me with the original plan, but I like to think that I contributed _something_, _somewhere_ in this journey… Ha. Haha. (Just kidding. I really _did_ come up with some of the later bits.) Therefore, when you're finished here, go read _Fill In The Blank _and _Courtney vs. The World_ if you haven't already_. The Art of Pretending_ (which is already rather far in progress) is, as stray said, far more freaking awesome than either of us ever would have imagined, which means more fun for you!—and for us. We have a little Eva coming…some Geoff and DJ…Harold…Lindsay… It's Playa De Losers! What did you expect? At any rate, I hope you enjoyed chapter one and are looking forward to chapter two.

So now, some parting words:

Thanks for reading! Please review. (:


	2. Never fail to expect the unexpected

Big thanks to everyone who reviewed the last chapter! It means the world to both of us.

If you'll recall, when we left Duncan, he'd fallen asleep in Courtney's bed. And now, we learn his fate…

* * *

**Rule 2: Never fail to expect the unexpected**

Courtney was typically a morning person. She'd get up even before her parents in the morning to finish up her homework or take a quick jog with the dog or watch that TV program she'd missed the night before—it was normal for her. 'Early to bed, early to rise,' yada yada yada, as they said. Chris's early morning trumpeting, blaring, or helicopter roaring, however, had seriously messed with her sleep cycle. Most mornings on the island resort, she would still find herself waking up prematurely, even for her schedule, in an attempt to beat Chris before he could scare her out of her skin (not that she would ever admit that his wake up calls scared her.)

Yet that morning, T minus 8 days to civilization, she found herself _tired_. Not her usual "tired-because-I-had-to-jump-through-hoops-for-a-sadistic-TV-host" or her more recent "tired-because-I-happily-wasted-all-my-energy-stalking-and-maiming-a-certain-red-haired-geek." Rather, she'd stayed up too late and too long the other night, waiting for the Boat of Losers that had never come, which left her feeling listlessly heavy and suffocatingly hot, even though she'd stripped down to her bra and panties and had only a thin sheet covering herself.

She'd complained multiple times during her stay about the roasting temperature in the rooms and even tried to change it herself, only to return from the pool one afternoon to find that her thermostat had been ripped clean off the wall. Or, not clean off, as it were: The thermostat had left an assortment of snapped wires in its wake, and insulation protruded from her wall like cotton candy. After fuming for a few days over this atrocity, she'd grudgingly hung a frame in the thermostat's place to cover the gaping hole it had left.

Courtney groaned in her semi-sleep, turning onto her side. Why was it hotter than Hell at that resort? It wasn't even noon! She tried to throw off the covers so she could release some of the accumulated heat and return to her wonderful dream, but when she blindly reached for the covers, she grabbed a hand instead. Or rather, an entire arm draped across her stomach.

Groggily, she twisted around. The curtains hung thick and weighted, keeping most of the light out of the room, but the little that did make it through cast the room in a red glaze—like the sun from behind eyelids. Either way, there was enough light to illuminate the muscular outline of Duncan, sleeping like the dead and lazily snoring against her shoulder (she'd been convinced it was her dad mowing the lawn again.) His Mohawk tickled her ear and his dog collar poked lightly into her shoulder blade.

"Hmm? Duncan?" she mumbled, trying to focus through her eyelashes. She and Duncan _appeared_ to be lying in the woods together, staring up at an interlocking canopy of trees. Courtney vaguely remembered something like this happening before... Or was it happening right then? Like _déjà vu_? Maybe it was just a dream; Courtney was far too sleepy to be certain anything was real. She didn't recall going back out into the woods the other night…

Duncan snorted and briefly opened an eye to look at her, and he then seemed to relapse into sleep like nothing. Courtney felt him flex the arm he had around her and take another breath as if to snore again when he replied, "Princess." She blinked her eyes once more to see that she'd returned to her room.

_Yeah, this is definitely a dream_, she decided. The only thing that really tipped her off that she was still dreaming was the insane heat. It wouldn't have been anywhere near that hot in a _real_ forest.

Courtney sighed. So, she was subconsciously fantasizing about the delinquent again. _Great_. She cursed her hormones and relaxed back onto her pillow to continue sleeping. She hadn't released her grip on Duncan's imaginary arm, though.

"I've got to stop with the" —yawn!— "coffee before bed." She weakly kicked the sheets off her legs to dispel some of the heat and settled her legs up against those of fantasy Duncan (which, she had to admit, felt _wonderful_.) "Freaking dreaming about Duncan again," she muttered, almost incoherently.

A few moments passed and the ceiling fan (useless as it was) beat steadily. Courtney had almost lost herself to blissful oblivion once more when a low and throaty voice near her ear pulled her back to Earth. It was Duncan's voice, she was sure, but she'd never heard it in that particular volume and tone before. "Well, you know what they say, babe…"

She felt him drag his hand slowly across her stomach and to her hip, her own hand still resting on top. She made a pleased purring sound at the sensation. Who cared if she was dreaming of Duncan again? It was turning into an amazing dream! But Duncan's hand didn't stop on her hip. It kept moving to the small of her back, and Courtney whimpered as she relinquished her hand when her arm wouldn't bend any further. His fingertips danced lower and lower on her body until…

"Sometimes dreams do come true," he whispered wickedly.

—and Courtney's reaction to where Duncan had just grabbed was very, very, _very_ real.

Her eyes snapped open wide.

* * *

"Oh my god, Katie! I agree!" Sadie sympathized as the dynamic duo stepped out of their shared room to head down to breakfast. Chris had assigned them to their own separate quarters, but the two just couldn't bear to be separated, even by a wall. Even by a curtain. "Scarred. For. Life!"

"Who's starred for life?" Lindsay asked excitedly, stepping out from her room near the Wonder Twins. "I wanna be a star! Pick me! Me!" She waved a hand in the air as if the very motion would bring stardom upon her.

"Not a star, Lindsay," Katie corrected with a giggle. Lindsay could be a really fun person if separated from Heather and her evil ways for long enough. "Sadie said 'scarred.'"

Lindsay considered this for a moment. "Ew! Scars are _totally_ unflightly," she replied. She gasped as she remembered something. "Oh my gosh! My friend Lola Hufferton—her real name is Luisa but she gets this weird eye twitchy thing if you ever call her that—she had a super bad scar, like on her shin or somewhere, and her Grandma Eleanor told her to rub grape juice on it—the good sugar free kind, not the brand with all the gross pulp—every day for a month, and then it went away! Maybe that'll work for _your_ scar."

"If only," Katie moaned, rubbing her eyes as the three started to make their way to the elevators. "The scar's in my brain."

Lindsay thought about that for a few seconds and scratched her chin. "Well, it's a little harder to get grape juice in there."

"Tell her what happened!" Sadie goaded as the three paused again, a few doors down from the elevators.

"Well," Katie began, getting her gossip voice ready, "you know how Noah and Courtney are always complaining about the cleaning staff being, like, nonexistent?"

Lindsay nodded decidedly. Those two were loud and obvious enough, daily, that even Lindsay had noticed. She was blonde, after all, not _dead_.

"Yeah, well, Katie saw the 'cleaning staff' going through the building last night," Sadie continued.

"Ooh, did they leave those cute little bottles of shampoo and conditioner?" Lindsay asked, demonstrating the size with her fingers. "I love those!"

"No," Katie moaned. "It was Chef. Dressed as a _French Maid_. With a feather duster and the hat and…" Katie shivered. "I just want to poke out my eyes!"

Sadie gasped, putting a hand to her heart. "Oh my gosh, me too! And I didn't even actually see it! We are such totally amazing BFFs!"

As the two hugged and squealed, Lindsay twirled some hair around her finger. "Well, maybe Chef was just—"

A scream echoed throughout the hallway, nearly scaring (not scarring) Katie, Sadie, and Lindsay out of their minds. It had come from behind the door of the room they were standing in front of: _Courtney's room_.

The three girls froze, staring at the door in terror as a voice shrieked from within. _"__**GET OUT!**__ GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT GET—!"_

They squealed and jumped out of the way as the door slammed open and Duncan was tossed out into the hallway like a sack of potatoes, wearing nothing more than his boxers and dog collar. He hit the opposite wall with a resounding thud and felled a wall-sconce in the process, but rather than mirroring the girls' looks of horror, he was grinning like an idiot.

"—_**OUT,**__ YOU FREAKING PERVERT! YOU SELF-CENTERED, EGO-CENTRIC SON OF A BITCH! I'M GOING TO SHRED YOUR SORRY CARCASS INTO MICROSCOPIC SLIVERS, YOU—!"_

Lindsay had to take another leap out of the way as Courtney threw Duncan's duffel bag out after him—he clamped his legs together and off to the side just in time to prevent the bag from colliding with his family jewels. His grin faltered momentarily as Hurricane Courtney continued to rage at him, but he recovered quickly.

Duncan had known (called it!) that he was going to regret testing her so early in the morning, but damn! The girl just set herself up so perfectly sometimes that it was a crime against humanity _not _to take a jab at her. He was pretty sure any sane person would have been running and screaming for his or her life at that moment, but he'd never seen Courtney lose her façade so completely. Quite frankly, it was a _huge_ turn-on. And just when he thought she'd run out of ways to make him go crazier for her.

It was then that he noticed Lindsay, Katie, and Sadie, quaking and petrified against the wall, as far out of Courtney's projectile range as possible. Duncan gracefully picked himself up off the floor as Courtney proceeded to screech every profanity under the sun—as applied to him, of course—throwing a pillow out after him. He pretended to have just noticed the three airheads as he absentmindedly grabbed the pillow out of midair, set it on a side table, and casually dusted himself off.

"Yeah," he replied smoothly, smirking at them. "This is _exactly_ what it looks like."

By that point, several other campers had been roused from their rooms by the sounds of Courtney's rampant screaming. Beth yawned and leaned out into the hallway, side ponytail first, as several other doors creaked open, echoing the noise.

"_What's__th_ going on out here?" she lisped, stepping out into the hallway. More doors opened and Leshawna, Izzy, Bridgette, and Eva all emerged in various stages of morning preparation.

Bridgette jogged over to where the crowd seemed to be gathered, whipping her hair up into a ponytail and tugging on her ever-present blue sweatshirt in the process. She alone was fully awake and concerned as her lifeguard instincts kicked in, without her conscious command. "Seriously, guys," she joked. "It sounds like someone's being murdered!"

"—_AND I CAN'T THINK OF A SINGLE CREATURE ON THIS PLANET THAT WOULD EAT YOUR REMAINS, YOU DISGUSTING, REPULSIVE, UTTERLY SORRY—!"_

"Something like that," Katie replied shakily, just as Duncan ducked down, barely dodging one of his own Converse shoes. It skimmed the top of his Mohawk and slammed into the wall behind him with a resounding _slap!_, falling onto the side table below and causing a decorative lamp to quiver uncertainly.

"—_EXCUSE FOR A HUMAN BEING! YOU MYOPIC, PRESUMPTUOUS, PATHOLOGICALLY INSOLENT BASTARD!"_

"Nice vocabulary, Princess!" he called back into her room, reaching over to grab his shoe (and making a note to check the first dictionary he came across.) "Learn that for the standardized tests or—_OW!_" His second high top connected with his skull. "God, woman!"

There was a thundering sound from the emergency stairs as Geoff, DJ, Trent, Cody, and Tyler all came running down, still in their sleep clothes. Tyler, leading the pack, tripped on the last step, but the other boys paid him no mind, jumping over his oddly bent form as he assured them, "I'm okay!"

"Is everything all right?" DJ squealed, standing behind Geoff. "Is someone hurt?"

Trent looked up and down the hallway, simultaneously trying to flatten out his absurd case of bed head. "Yeah, we heard screaming!"

"And came to offer our services," Cody added, making a buff pose in his underpants.

Geoff crossed straight over to where Bridgette was standing, just beside Katie and Sadie, and asked, "What's going on, babe?" His girlfriend, however, was laughing.

"Oh, nothing much," she snickered, putting a hand up to stifle her giggles.

"Duncan's taking the Walk of Shame _in_ _style_," Izzy informed them gleefully, bouncing up and down the hall to add to the quickly escalating mayhem.

Leshawna was completely doubled over with laughter. "Whoo! That boy sure knows how to make an entrance _and_ an exit!"

Duncan shrugged. "One of my many talents," he replied smugly as Courtney threw his shirt and pants out at his face, still ranting.

"—_YOU SHOULD BE CASTRATED AND STERILIZED AND—__**ARE YOU EVEN LISTENING TO ME?"**_

"One," Duncan said casually, holding up a finger, "Even I know those are synonyms. And I failed Freshman Lit." Duncan grinned, and from where DJ stood watching, he thought Duncan was enjoying his situation way too much. "And two, all I was doing was catching up the latecomers."

There was silence from inside Courtney's room for a full five seconds while the laughter and snickering increased in volume. Then she hissed, "Oh my god. THERE ARE _PEOPLE_ OUT THERE_?"_

Courtney was at the door in an instant, staring at essentially the entire cast of the show (give or take a few), wearing her underwear and holding the bed sheets up around herself, flushing red hot scarlet. She let out another screech and reached out to grab the door handle, slamming the door shut as most of her fellow campers burst out laughing. But, she wasn't finished.

"_WHEN I GET DRESSED, DUNCAN, YOU ARE __**DEAD**__! __**DO YOU HEAR ME?**__ I'M GOING TO DISMEMBER YOU AND POLISH YOU OFF WITH MY BARE HANDS!"_

Duncan slung his clothing over a shoulder and got up close to the door to make sure she could hear him over the contagious roar of laughter that filled most of the hallway. She was making it so easy, it almost wasn't worth trying. _Almost_. He tapped on the small peephole in the door to make sure she was paying attention and leaned in close, a hand cupped over his mouth.

"I'm sincerely looking forward to it, Prin—"

But then, the door shot open sharply, the wooden corner hitting him in the face, chest, and groin simultaneously. Duncan felt his eyebrow ring imprint itself on his skull as he doubled over, ears ringing from the pain. Or maybe it was the uproarious laughter of their friends. Maybe a little of both. He glanced up and realized he could see Courtney through the crack of the door she held partly open. Her eyebrows were scrunched in fury, but the corners of her mouth were tipped up in a triumphant smirk. And by the look in her ebony eyes…

He could have sworn she was laughing as honestly as Geoff and Leshawna behind him. Duncan found himself in a situation $100,000 down in cash and up one pissed off, possibly homicidal potential girlfriend, and to his surprise (and beyond the pain between his legs), he realized that he _really_ liked those odds.

Courtney shut the door firmly and decidedly, almost cracking the frame with her strength, and didn't say anything else beyond barking at everyone to "stop laughing immediately" or she was coming to get them too. Geoff and DJ came to help Duncan straighten up, unable to keep themselves from laughing, despite Courtney's threat.

The elevator made a dinging noise and Harold and Noah stepped out, rubbing the sleep from their eyes. "I swear," Noah began, "if I've been roused from sleep because there's a moth in someone's room again, I'm going to throw myself into the deep end of the pool with a boulder tied to my neck."

"Never pegged you to be the—_argh_—selfless type," Duncan managed to croak out at Noah. In his head, the delinquent was weighing the pros and cons of his situation in an attempt to decide whether he was going to kill Chef Hatchet and Chris faster or slower as a result of the morning's events. Most of the campers were still laughing, but Duncan wasn't sure which list to sort that one into, so he skipped it.

Harold took one look at Duncan and the plaque that labeled the room of everyone's attention _Courtney's Room_, and he suddenly found himself wide awake. "Oh, gee, I think I left my…uh, slippers up in my room," he wheezed. "I'll just go swiftly grab those and um…Uh-huh." Harold was immediately back in the elevator he'd just stepped out of, before the doors had even had the time to close. Noah had never even stepped out.

Lindsay, who stood befuddled exactly where she'd been for the whole event, finally spoke up. "Can we, like, hold on for a mini-second?" She thought for her mini-second and then announced, "I still don't get it."

Beth patted her friend's shoulder in a comforting gesture. "Don't worry, Linds," she said. "I'll explain it to you later." She paused uncertainly, glancing around at the gathered campers. "…As soon as someone explains it to me."

Finally, Duncan was able to manage standing without help. Courtney sure had some upper body strength! He was bumping fists with Geoff and DJ as the campers dispersed (many wiping tears from their eyes) when he noticed something unusual. Near the end of the hallway, one of Chris's infamous interns was trying (and failing) to stealthily sneak away with a large shoulder camera. He'd obviously taped the whole incident, and that was _not okay_.

Duncan's blue eyes iced over as he narrowed his gaze. Catching the event on camera had probably been the goal of the whole setup in the first place! Wordlessly, he nudged DJ and Geoff and jerked his head in the direction of the intern. The two boys glanced over and silently came to the same conclusion Duncan had.

The intern glanced back to the group to find three sets of determined eyes locked onto him, and he paled. Making a frightened '_eep!_' sound, he bolted for the emergency exit, the three boys hot on his heels.

Before he'd even made it halfway down the hallway, Duncan decided he was going to kill McLean and Hatchet slower. Much, _much, _slower.

* * *

HAHA, PLOT TWIST! But, at least Duncan's not dead. Yet.

And now, some ridiculously long-winded notes from your two co-authors, which didn't actually get shorter like we'd planned:

**From strayphoenix: **Wow! Thanks to everyone for the great reviews! We really appreciate all the support you've given for this story by reviewing, faving, and PMing us individually. (That may or may not have a direct effect on how fast we update *wink*). So, Rina doesn't give herself credit for the awesome job she did on writing Chapter 1 and getting this crazy ball rolling (which, let's all agree, was an amazingly awesome job.) Fortunately, I don't have that same crediting problem :). (Although, despite being initially written by one author or another, each chapter has been through so many proof-reads that TAOP has evened out into one fluid blend of our different writing styles.)

This chapter is important not only for its sheer value in awesomeness, but also because it's the scene that ties into my OTHER TDI/TDA story, "Courtney vs. The World". In Chapter 4, Courtney is blackmailed by one of Duncan's ex-girlfriends with footage taken behind the scenes during TDI, in the time that Duncan and Courtney were on Playa De Losers together. That's how this whole thing started, really. But do not fear! The best is yet to come…

**From Contemperina: **Gee. I like letting stray go first in these author's notes! Besides the fact that she flatters me shamelessly, she gets all the technicalities out of the way like, "Thank you awesome reviewers, we love you!" so I can just handle the good stuff. (; So…did anyone catch our allusion to TDA (Get A Clue) with Lindsay's mention of her friend Lola Hufferton? One snickerdoodle for you if you did! Oh, and we hope you enjoyed Courtney's advanced vocabulary. I spent a fair amount of time on thesaurus .com searching for suitable words and insults… Because, unfortunately, my vocabulary is not _quite _up to Courtney's level. But don't worry. Like stray said, vocab-wise and otherwise, the best is yet to come…

Thanks for reading! Please review. (:


	3. Never look less tough than necessary

A million thanks to everyone who reviewed! (And a billion thanks to those who reviewed both Chapters 1 _and_ 2!) The wonderful response has knocked us both off our feet.

If you'll recall, when we left Duncan, he, Geoff, and DJ had taken off down the hallway in pursuit of the cameraman. And now we learn his fate…

* * *

**Rule 3: Never look less tough than necessary**

"Give it up, pretty boy," Duncan growled through clenched teeth.

"NEVER!" The cameraman lay jumbled at the bottom of the stairwell, clutching the camera protectively, as if it were his unfulfilled life itself. Duncan, meanwhile, towered over him, arms crossed and eyes narrowed in a testosterone-charged pose.

He smirked to himself proudly, exchanging fist-bumps with Geoff and DJ beside him, never taking his eyes off the intern. Had anyone seen it, the chase leading up to that point would have looked completely bizarre: three adolescent boys in their underwear chasing after a less-adolescent, fully clothed cameraman carrying an out-of-date camera (Chris was a cheapo to the end) that looked like a parasite ready to devour his arm. You didn't see _that_ every day. But, after a comically long-winded chase through the resort (which involved all three floors of the main building, the spa, gym, pool, staff quarters, and an arcade room, which Duncan made a note to return to soon), they finally caught their prey, headed to the basement darkroom beneath the resort's first floor.

Duncan couldn't be sure if anyone actually _had_ seen the chase or not, but with the three-against-one odds and the fact that the intern had been using all the supposedly-secret staff entrances and exits, there hadn't been much opportunity for anyone to witness the event. It had all ended in about fifteen minutes.

Even so, Duncan had come dangerously close to the end of his list of intimidating threats. Geoff didn't offer much more than "Dude, this is so not cool!" and DJ had been no help at all. (Saying 'please' just didn't cut it when you were trying to threaten someone's life.) So, when Camera-Crony, as Duncan had _affectionately_ termed him, busted through the door to the stairwell, Duncan decided to end the chase once and for all by diving off the top step, tackling him with an animalistic howl, and rolling with him down the remainder of the flight.

It hadn't hurt. Not _really_. (The soreness in his head could be attributed to Courtney's Converse-brand projectiles.) Duncan figured he would feel the pain the next day, since that's how those things usually worked. But hey, at least he'd been expecting the impact in his adrenaline-fueled rage and had prepared accordingly. Camera-Crony hadn't been so lucky, taking most of the impact with his _head_.

That would explain his idiocy, in any case. Who wouldn't give up a camera to the three strongest guys in the competition after tumbling down a flight of stairs _and_ taking most of the impact with his cranium? Only someone with a concussion. Or maybe Courtney, if she were in the mind to do so. Duncan, however, didn't really want to think about her lethal capabilities at that moment, especially since he was surely her number one chalk outline.

Duncan pulled his thoughts back to the crumpled heap of a man lying below him. "One more chance before you die," he announced. "Give. Us. The camera."

"I can't!" the intern cried as Duncan reached down to snatch it himself. The idiot put up a fight, though, tugging it out of Duncan's grip in between words. "Mr. McLean will—_ugh_—kill me if—" Duncan yanked at the camera, sneering. "—I don't get this film back to him—_ouch__!_—ASAP. ASAP, he said!" Duncan finally put his foot up against Camera-Crony's chest for leverage and pulled at the contraption, seizing the camera and squashing the guy's lungs at the same time. Two birds with one stone.

Duncan shook his head at the man disappointedly, turning around to face his waiting companions. "Listen up," he said, spot-checking the camera for any obvious damages and finding several. Geoff and DJ straightened up as they were addressed. "I'm tired, and I'm hungry. I'm standing here in my frickin' underwear, and if Courtney gets her way, I'm getting my balls hacked off later today." The boys chuckled as Duncan smiled lightly. "So, I don't feel like dealing with this asshole right now." He nudged the wheezing cameraman with his bare toe in indication. "I'm leaving you guys to handle him. Got it?"

DJ furrowed his eyebrows in uncertain silence, but Geoff saluted, almost knocking his cowboy hat to the ground. (Did that thing ever leave his head?) "Aye-eye, sir!" After that, though, his enthusiasm wavered momentarily. He glanced at the pathetic man curiously and asked, "But…what should we do with him?"

Duncan leaned against the railing from his position on the first step, a head higher than Geoff but still half a head shorter than DJ. He climbed another step to fix this problem and then looked down at his pals. "Go to town, boys. Do something. Anything. Everything! I don't care what it is, as long as it hurts and preferably comes with serious long-term side effects." He smirked at them and nodded conspiratorially, but they still looked unconvinced. "Oh, _come on_," he moaned, getting annoyed. "You two are tough." After all, to be Duncan's friend you _had_ to be. "You'll think of something."

Duncan turned his back on them and made his way up the stairs as hushed mumblings commenced below, just like he'd known they would.

"Alrighty then, Deej! What do we do?"

"I don't know! Administer first aid? Medicate him? Inspect his head for signs of a concussion?"

"Deeeeee-eeeeeeej! Duncan said it has to be _painful_."

"Well, I know, but…what if this guy needs this job? What if he's got a family to support? What if he has _kids_?"

"Seriously, bro? That guy's like 22 years old."

"So?"

"So, if I had kids at that age, I'd _want _to die."

An audible gasp. "How can you say such a thing?"

"_Whatever_, dude. Come on, let's get this guy out of here and—"

"Rehabilitate him!"

"No, DJ! We've gotta think up something good! Something prison-style, knitty-gritty, make-your-mama-cry-like-a-baby good!"

"My mama?!"

Duncan leaned over the railing, looked down at his friends from above, and shouted, "GEOFF'S IN CHARGE!" His voice echoed around the stairwell, yelling at them from all directions.

"Yee-ah!" Geoff punched his fist into the air and began cabbage-patching to the tune of, "I'm in _char-arge_, I'm in _char-arge_!" DJ turned his face up to the top of the stairwell just in time to see a receding green Mohawk, which was followed by a resounding _Bang!_ as the door slammed shut.

_-=-_

Trying to block out the sounds of Geoff's happy dance, Duncan retraced his steps back to the girls' hallway (getting turned around twice in the process and therefore taking just as long as the _actual _chase to get back to the starting line.) Along the way, he picked up two shoes, a sock, his skull-adorned shirt, pants, and his belt, all of which he'd been carrying before.

Finding himself back at Courtney's door in the end, he quickly scanned the area and saw no one (though he did find his second sock hanging from a lamp.) He yanked on his jeans and shoes quickly.

Automatically reaching for his next article of clothing, he realized something was missing—where was his undershirt? The yellow one that went layered underneath the black one? Dumping out the contents of his duffel bag and revealing nothing more than dirty socks, a change of underwear, a sharpener for his pocket knife, a comb, and more hygienic stuff, Duncan found himself out of luck. Stuffing everything back inside, plus the pilfered camera and videotape (he had to force the zipper to make it shut), he shoved the bag out of his way and came to the only plausible conclusion: his shirt was still in Courtney's room. She must have missed it—it had probably blended in _real_ well with her vision whilst she'd been seeing red. Wonderful.

Duncan groaned, tossing his hands in the air. Someone upstairs was really getting a kick out of the day he'd been having. "Am I just _meant_ to lose my balls today or what?" he asked no one in particular.

Eva exited her room then, looking only slightly shocked to find Duncan shirtless, standing in the middle of the hallway with his arms held over his head. After walking towards the elevator and jamming a finger into the DOWN arrow, Eva folded her arms and regarded the boy squarely. "What are you doing?"

Duncan rolled his eyes. "Finger-painting," he shot sarcastically, throwing a scowl in her direction. "What does it _look _like I'm doing?"

Eva matched his scowl. "At least put a shirt on," she scoffed, eyeing his rock-hard abs. This wouldn't have bothered Duncan—he was used to it—except for the fact that the look on Eva's face wasn't so much _You're a stud! _as it was _My abs are rock-harder than yours, weakling. _Now _that_ was annoying.

"You know," he began tensely, lowering his arms from where they'd been hanging in the air. "The whole world can't wear one-piece jumpsuits like you. Some of us have to actually _locate _our shirts before we put them on."

Eva's scowl deepening, she replied, "Your shirt's right there, pinhead," and pointed to the black one balled up in his fist.

Duncan dropped it on the floor and kicked it over to his duffel bag, giving her a cold stare. "My _other_ shirt. It's in Princess Courtney's room."

"Then why don't you go get it?" Eva asked flatly, looking from shirtless Duncan to Courtney's door and back. "You _clearly_ had no trouble getting in last night."

"Where have you _been _today, under a rock?!" Duncan questioned. Hadn't everyone found out about the debacle by that point? He clenched his jaw in an attempt to keep his hands from balling into fists. That was always an indicator of trouble.

Eva snorted. "Believe me, I _saw_ what happened this morning. But that doesn't have anything to do with why you can't go get your shirt."

"Are you kidding me?" Duncan asked, his voice growing louder. Was she really so stupid? "That has everything to do with it! I can't go in there. Princess would murder m—_what do you want?_"

He'd stopped on account of Eva staring at him. It wasn't the typical staring he was used to, though, the kind that asked '_What the heck is that green thing on that boy's head?' _or_ 'Why are seven cops _(that was Duncan's personal record)_ chasing after that guy?' _This look was strange, one he wasn't accustomed to getting from someone his age. Ever. It seemed to fall somewhere in the range of pity and exasperation, but it looked outright inhuman coming from Eva, the girl with the face so blank it looked like she got a shot of Botox every morning before breakfast!

Eva shook her head at him. "Do you really not _get_ it? Can you not _hear_ your pathetic whimpering?" Duncan stared at her coldly, crossing his arms and giving no indication one way or the other. "Idiot," she muttered. She took a moment to gather herself and then began whining in a fairly spot-on imitation of Duncan: "Oh no, I can't go in _there_. That's _Courtney's _room! She's so strong and intimidating, even a tough guy like _me_ can't take her on! I think I'll just stand out here in the hallway instead and hope that a shirt falls out of the ceiling so I don't have to expose my bare-chested self all day!"

Duncan narrowed his eyes, finally allowing his hands to ball up into fists. "You did _not _just go there." It was _on_.

Eva matched his intimidating pose. "Oh, so are you deaf now too, Green-head?"

She was losing her cool, not that she ever had any to start with; Duncan could tell from the way she was growling. That just wasn't normal, and it was only cute when Courtney was the one doing it. In the stare-down between the two of them that followed, Duncan decided to take another stab at a pro-con list since the first one hadn't been so successful.

He mentally titled it, _Getting Into A Fight With Eva—Pros and Cons_.

Pro: He'd look tough.

Con: He _wouldn't _look tough if she ended up beating him up. (What? He'd just fallen down a flight of stairs!)

Another con: Guys weren't supposed to hit girls.

But a pro: Eva wasn't _really_ a girl anyway, so that didn't matter.

Con: It would rouse the whole hallway, again.

Pro: That would take some of the focus off the Courtney incident, so maybe it would be worth it.

Con: Eva would hold a grudge forever and spend the rest of her time at the resort trying to sabotage him.

Pro: Sabotaging her attempts at sabotage for the rest of his time at the resort would give him something to do.

Con: She had two dumbbells on her, while all Duncan had was his damaged pocket-knife.

Pro: More battles had been won with pocket-knives than with dumbbells…

Con: He was starting to sound like Harold. (Gag!)

_Ding! _The elevator doors slid open, begging someone to step inside so that he or she could be assaulted by both Chris's huge self-portrait and the tacky elevator music, all at once. What fun!

Eva jolted out of her battle pose and threw one more epic sneer in Duncan's direction before storming over to the elevator and punching—literally _punching_—the button for the first floor. Hopefully, she'd get stuck in there. Maybe she'd go crazy from the sight of Chris's face and the constant repetition of the _Na na na_ song! One could only hope.

Duncan glowered at Eva until the elevator doors closed on her scowl, and he then turned to regard room **6G**. Could Eva have actually been right? Was he being a wuss? …He really was, wasn't he? He was being ridiculous! Courtney wouldn't dare fight him—no more than usual, anyway. (He hoped.) He could take that. And hey, he needed his shirt! At least he had an excuse for being in her room that time around.

He fished through his pockets, finding his (her?) room key among the couple of stolen trinkets he'd already snatched. Not bothering to listen at the door for signs of her or anyone else, he slid the key in the lock and pulled the door open, peeking his head around the side. He pulled the door open completely after a few more seconds, figuring his Princess wasn't present since he was still alive.

The room looked pretty much the same in the daylight as it had the other night, except the colors were sharper. A bathroom, a closet, a desk, a bed. The usual. The room had been tidied up a bit, the bed made and the maroon curtains tied back from the balcony window, which had been opened for the day to let in the summer breeze. There was nothing on the floor anymore, the "nothing" including his yellow shirt. Where the heck was that thing?

After quickly scanning the room for his shirt and not finding it, he crossed over to the huge window and peered out at the scene below. As the sun beat comfortably on his bare chest, he saw Katie and Sadie, gossiping by the pool bar/snack shack; Leshawna, stuffing her face by the breakfast buffet while Harold looked on admiringly from a hiding place in the bushes; Bridgette, swimming laps in the pool, effortlessly as a marlin; Ezekiel, trying to talk slang to Noah while Noah steadfastly ignored him. Duncan chuckled. _You can take the kids out of Wawanakwa, but you can't take Wawanakwa out of the kids._

A few moments later he turned from the window, feeling a bit like a creeper, and started seriously looking for his shirt. Maybe it had gotten kicked under the bed…?

* * *

Eva, are you putting Duncan in potentially life-threatening situations on purpose?

And now, some ridiculously long-winded notes from your two co-authors, in which some major pimpage occurs:

**strayphoenix**: So props to **Rina** again for pulling off another great set of chapters (we had to split Chapter 3 in two because the sheer amount of awesomeness it contained would have made the internet explode.) You see, my original idea kinda ended with the _waking up_ scene and Duncan being thrown out, so I wasn't sure what was to come 'the morning after' lol. But **Rina** pulled this off as one of the most character driven chapters we have with the D/G/DJ exchange and the Eva/Duncan face-off (an unexpected surprise), really making it a kicker and a great set up for what's to come when Courtney decides to grab a change of clothes in about, oh, twenty seconds or so...

In slightly less dramatic tones, I happened to be listening to 'Sudden Death in Carolina' by Brand New as I wrote chapter two, and I laughed at how well it connected. Check it out if you will :)

**Contemperina: **So, Duncan got the camera! Three cheers for Duncan! Hurrah!  
_Does this mean the fic's basically over now?  
_NO WAY! Are you kidding me??  
_Well, what else could really happen? __**stray**__ already said the original inspiration is pretty much out...  
_Don't worry about that. We found a LOT more inspiration. You have no idea.  
On a different note, did anyone enjoy the Duncan/Eva face-off? I was trying to figure out who could possibly make Duncan look like a wuss, and the answer was _obvious_. Plus, I like Eva. I think she's funny, and she's a decidedly underused character. You'll see a lot of underused characters appearing in here, actually. Zeke, Noah, Eva… They never really got a chance, you know?

Okay, sure, this chapter _was_ initially mine, but I MUST point out that **stray** isn't giving herself enough credit either. She has incredible ideas, and this story wouldn't be here right now if it weren't for her PM-ing me and getting this ball rolling. Oh, and her writing's pretty good too. ;) Just kidding. It's awesome to the amazing-th power, as you all know already.

_-=-_

Duncan's in a compromising position, isn't he? Loitering in Courtney's room. Shirtless.  
Finding out what comes next indirectly requires the clickage of that _cosmic latte_ & green colored button down… There. Yeah, there. (TDI reference?)

Thanks for reading! Please review. (:


	4. Never let her forget she's crazy for you

Dear reviewers,  
You're amazing and fantastic.  
Love, Contemperina and strayphoenix

If you'll recall, when we left Duncan, Eva had convinced him to go into Courtney's room (without permission) in order to find his shirt. And now we learn his fate…

* * *

**Rule 4: Never let her forget she's **_**crazy**_** about you**

"A simple 'excuse me' would have sufficed!" Courtney spat as Eva shoved past her and out of the elevator she'd just summoned, clipping her hard in the shoulder. Honestly, the girl didn't have to be so rude all the time. There was plenty of room in the doorway for both of them! The brunette huffed as she pressed her finger into the button for the second floor and the door slid shut. _Dear Mom and Dad, I'm doing fine. You guys are on my mind…_

She forced herself to focus on the lyrics to calm herself. Honestly, Courtney kind of enjoyed riding in the resort's elevators. Sure, that big picture of Chris was horrid, but the elevator music wasawfully catchy. She smiled to herself as the second verse came around, simultaneously ringing out her wet ponytail in her towel and trying to keep from dripping onto the already soaked floor.

As the doors slid open on the girls' hallway, Courtney exited the elevator and hurriedly made her way to 6G, shivering from the cold pool water. It was remarkable how she'd cooled down. Just fifteen minutes ago, she'd been completely fired up, partially from her fury towards Duncan, partially from the awful temperature inside the resort (mostly Duncan, though). In hindsight, she was grateful that Bridgette had convinced her to swim a few laps in the pool with her; they had helped her _tremendously_. However, while Bridgette probably could have stayed all day, Courtney was not of the same mindset. She'd left her friend after only a few laps, promising to get changed in her room and meet her in the lounge later.

Courtney grabbed her sodden towel and shook it out, her room key dropping out of its depths and falling to the floor. Picking it up and sliding it in the lock, she pulled her door open quickly, legitimately relieved for the boiling temperature of her room.

The door swung shut easily behind her, but Courtney froze in her tracks. Was that…a pair of legs sticking out from under her bed? She watched them kick from side to side, taking a few cautious steps closer. The person's upper torso was completely lost to her mattress, but after a split-second of observation, Courtney was certain it was Duncan. (That snake!) She would have recognized those filthy red high-tops from a mile away.

Her heart fluttered for a moment at the sight of him (damn, he had a fine ass), but she frantically quashed all the butterflies that had sprung up in the pit of her stomach and channeled them into her foot, proceeding to deliver unto him a swift kick in the ribs. _That_ made her feel a bit better.

Duncan whacked his head on the mattress hovering above him, cursing from where he had immersed himself under the bed. Courtney grabbed him by the ankles and yanked him out from underneath, staring daggers at his back as he grumbled something unintelligible and rolled over to look up at her, rubbing the back of his head irately.

Courtney watched him take in her sopping form, starting at the water pooling by her feet and making his way over her scarcely covered figure, finally meeting her eyes. She fought the urge to blush as the annoyance vanished from his face, replaced by a lust he didn't even attempt to conceal.

"Well, well, Princess," he said, folding his arms behind his head as he had so many times before. "We meet again."

Courtney felt her breath quickening and pointed to the door, trying her hardest to keep from screaming.

"What part of '_Get your sorry ass out of my room!_' did you not understand the first time around?"

The boy lying below her smirked, raising an eyebrow. "Aw, come on, babe. You know you're happy to see me."

"Happy to see you _dead_," she shot back from where she stood, crossing her own arms. "If you thought I was out of projectiles, you are sadly mistaken, '_babe'_. You have about ten seconds to explain yourself before you find out exactly what _is_ and _isn't_ bolted down in this room. Now, _what_ are you doing here?"

_Shirtless? _she added. God. _Duncan was shirtless_. She commanded herself not to stare, but it was difficult not to. _Excruciatingly _ pulled her gaze up to his face, but only after having taken in his ripped physique for just a moment too long.

"Like what you see?" he asked boldly, gesturing to his bare chest. Vicious red streaks had started to appear across his stomach where she'd dragged him over the carpet, plus a red blotch and scratch where her foot had connected with his abdomen.

But even so, the answer was yes. "You are so vile!" she declared, stomping her foot and shaking her head in frustration, sending drops of water flying in all directions.

Duncan shrugged from the floor, not bothering to deny the statement. Or to get up.

"Look," Courtney asked, point-blank. "Do you have any intention of leaving me _alone _anytime soon?"

Duncan yawned theatrically. "_Hmm_…Not really. No." He stood up only to plop back down on her bed, unceremoniously spreading out over its entirety to accentuate his point.

Courtney sighed. "I could only expect as much from you." Part of her was still enraged (to the maximum) over what had happened earlier, and _that_ part had the intense desire to toss him out into the hallway again and leave his indentation on the opposite wall. The other half, however, had honestly missed him (ridiculous as it seemed to her sensible, CIT side) and didn't want him to leave. Not in the slightest. Unfortunately for her pride, the insensible half won, so she left him lying on her bed and crossed briskly to her closet, violently yanking a fresh set of clothes off their hanger.

Duncan watched her from where he lay sprawled on her bed, tracing her movements steadily. "Don't you want to know what I'm doing here?"

Courtney crossed to her bathroom and slammed the door, locking it firmly behind her. Shouting so he could hear her through the door, she responded, "You've never needed a reason before! What makes this time any different?" Duncan had to admit, she had a point, like usual.

Safely locked inside her bathroom, Courtney pulled off her damp bathing suit and dried off with a towel, listening as Duncan tramped over to the door. "Actually," he proclaimed, "I have an excuse this time!"

"I highly doubt that!" she yelled, pulling her sweater over her head as Duncan jiggled the doorknob from the other side. "Ugh, just _hold_ _on_!" she screeched.

Duncan pounded on the door, specifically aiming to annoy her, smirking as he heard her drop what was probably a hairdryer. "Come on!" he called. "I've got a really, really, really, really, really, really_, really—"_

"GET ON WITH IT, DUNCAN!"

"—good excuse this time!"

Courtney rolled her eyes, turning her blow-dryer on high blast to drown out whatever pathetic defense he was about to toss in her direction. Nevertheless, a couple minutes later when she looked semi-presentable and it had become obvious that Duncan wasn't going to be taking 'no' for an answer, she shut her hair dryer off. Holding it like a handgun, she flung the door open (hitting Duncan would have been worth another 10 points in the _Courtney-vs-Duncan _war), but he'd previously returned to her bed. He paused mid-sarcastic comment and smirked at the makeshift weapon.

"Cocked and loaded, are we?" he teased, eyeing the hairdryer in her white-knuckled hands. For someone who'd had _actual _guns pointed at him, the appliance didn't faze him.

Courtney momentarily considered chucking the damn thing at his head (how fazed would he be _then?_) but decided against it—throwing things at him hadn't even worked the first time. Plus, it was an expensive, limited edition hair-dryer; even a dent in Duncan's skull wouldn't have been worth its sacrifice. Instead, she dumped the hairdryer back into an open drawer and grudgingly marched over to her bed, staring Duncan down. He patted the space next to him suggestively.

"Not in _this_ lifetime, cockroach."

Duncan tilted his head in her direction, thinking. There were a couple of ways he could go about presenting the next bit of information to her. One, he could try to blow off everything like it was no big thing. Unfortunately, he knew she would never buy that. Two, he could play it off like it was entirely Chris and Chef's fault, which was probably true, but also not very fun. And three, he could pretend like it was all _her_ fault, which would definitely be entertaining. So, he obviously opened door number three.

Duncan smirked at her, preparing for an argument. "It's _your_ own fault I'm even in here, ya know."

Courtney gaped at him. "Oh, _really? _And how on Earth did you arrive at _that_ conclusion?"

"I was just looking for my shirt," he said innocently, indicating his unclothed chest once more. "You forgot to throw it out this morning. Too busy going insane, I guess. Or maybe you just wanted a souvenir, in which case you can totally keep it…" He waggled his eyebrows in her direction, motivating the brunette to impulsively dive-tackle him and shove him to the floor.

She stayed on her hands and knees, glaring down at his scowling figure as she gripped the edge of her mattress. "It is absolutely NOT my fault that I quote-unquote 'forgot' to throw out your ratty old shirt this morning! You shouldn't have been here in the _first_ place, you cur! You were _sleeping_ with me! _In my bed!" _she added for emphasis. She conveniently neglected to mention the part about him grabbing her butt; it was just too humiliating for words.

Duncan shrugged from his position on the floor, his butt (and ego) only slightly bruised. Regardless, he was obviously pleased that he had a semi-viable explanation for the morning's events, and he confidently went on to explain, "But see, that's not my fault either. Chef gave me the wrong key last night. He told me this was _my _room, so by the time I found my way up here, I was so tired I didn't have the energy to go find my real room. Do you know how gigantic this place is? I was so exhausted I fell asleep. You might not know this, but that's what happens when _humans _get tired."

Courtney looked at him incredulously, sitting back on her heels and crossing her arms. "And of all the places, you landed _in my bed?_"

Duncan pulled himself up off the floor and onto his knees, leaning his elbows on the bed by Courtney's legs. "Pretty much. Yeah."

"You're kidding, right?" Courtney pursed her lips, tossing all this new information around in her head like a Total Drama Salad. It all sounded justified on the surface, but what if it was just a scam? One of those stories that sounded reasonable but lacked logic when you really thought about it! Courtney didn't have the time to think it over. But, if Duncan was telling the truth, he could have ended up in anyone's bed. Sadie's bed. Bridgette's bed. _Harold's _bed! Had it all been just a fluke?

As much as she hated to admit it, under all her livid fury (which had been and still was absolutely genuine!), she'd been a little flattered by that fact that Duncan had snuck into _her _room for his first night. Not Geoff's, not DJ's. _H__ers_. But, if what he said was true, the other night hadn't been anything. It had been a _mistake. _And with that realization, Courtney was suddenly even _more _pissed off.

She forced herself to soften her expression momentarily, looking down at Duncan sweetly. "You're really telling the truth, aren't you?"

Duncan sighed. Finally, he was in the clear! "One hundred percent, darling."

At that, she allowed her features to twist up in fury, balling her hands into fists. "Then _GET OUT__!_ Before I punch you in the nose!"

Duncan widened his eyes, instinctively flinching away from her and throwing his hands up to defend his face. Peeking through his fingers, he yelled, "What the hell?! I thought you said you believed me! My reason makes perfect sense!"

Courtney nodded crisply. "I do, and it does. So _GET OUT__!_"

Duncan stared at her like she was crazy, which only added to her building rage. "Jesus, what did I ever do to you?" Yeah, yeah, yeah, he could think of a couple of things he'd done. So what? Asking, '_What did I ever do to you? I mean, besides humiliating and/or openly flirting with you against your wishes every chance I ever got' _just didn't hold the same kind of impact.

"You want to know what you did?" she spat through gritted teeth as she got off the bed. Duncan nodded, raising his eyebrows expectantly. She ticked off one finger. "Camp Wawanakwa. Day one. You called me a Cyclops. It just goes downhill from there."

It took him a second to process that.

Well, that wasn't what he'd been expecting. _You convinced me to steal food out of Chris's fridge! _Sure_. You snuck into my room, spent the night with me, and grabbed my ass! _Of course_. You snuck into my room _again_, in the _same day_, to look for your stupid shirt! _Obviously_. _But the Cyclops thing? "You're holding a grudge for _that_? _Seriously_?"

"Yes! No! I mean, not _just_ that!" she stammered. "Everything! You're driving me up the _walls_!"

Duncan nearly said _"Ditto, Princess_," but caught himself just in time. He'd brought his hands down from his face (even though he wasn't out of the line of fire just yet) and was trying to piece together his exact situation so he could devise a way of safely getting _out_ of it.

He could tell Courtney wasn't _really_ pissed off at him—not truly (since she kept looking at his pecs)—but this was still a fragile situation. There had to be something specific bothering her. People just didn't get worked up over imaginary situations. Something had happened recently that set her off, but not so recently as him getting to the resort.

Then it hit him. _The_ _Heather thing_. (Shudder.) That had to be behind her spontaneous combustion! Courtney wasn't normally a 'shoot balls off first, ask questions later' kind of gal. She liked order. She liked reason. She liked _him!_

He got up and took a couple steps to where she stood rooted in front of her bed, arms tightly crossed. "Look, I know what this is all about," he began, holding up his hands harmlessly. "You're mad about the _Heather_ _thing_. I get that."

Courtney stared at him flatly. "The _Heather thing_."

"Yeah. You're mad about what happened last challenge, what got me kicked off." Courtney looked at him blankly, so he sighed and kept talking. "I'm telling you, I was dead tired from running from Sasquatchinakwa all night. She snuggled up next to me and started working all her girly mind tricks, and I just couldn't help myself, okay? That's the only reason I didn't toss her aside like the harpy she is!"

_Shut up! _Something inside him (called his long-dormant common sense) was starting to panic, but he kept talking. "I couldn't _help_ falling asleep with her when she was wrapped around me like that!"

_Shut _up_, Duncan! Seriously shut the hell up!_ "But I _swear_," he added, putting a hand on his heart, "I was thinking about you the _whole_ time."

Courtney's onyx eyes lit up with such a fire that Duncan was nearly positive he would be burned on the very spot. He briefly considered that maybe his common sense might've been on to something with the whole 'shut up' thing.

"_YOU SLEPT WITH __**HEATHER**_?!"

"Uh…" Duncan stood there stupidly, his jaw hanging open. "You didn't know?"

"I CAN'T _BELIEVE_ THIS!" she screamed, throwing her arms into the air. "How many other girls have you slept with in the last 48 hours?!"

Despite his circumstances (or perhaps due to panic _because_ of them), Duncan sniggered. "You might want to quiet down, Princess. That doesn't sound like what you think it does."

"_I SURE HOPE IT DOESN'T_," she shot back. "_BECAUSE IT __**SHOULD**__ SOUND LIKE, 'YOU'RE BEYOND DEAD MEAT!_'" Courtney grabbed the soaked towel she'd left on the floor and stalked towards him, holding it like a whip (or noose) as she backed him up against the window—_definitely_ not good news for Duncan.

He should have been searching for an escape route. He had to get out of there, stat, but he was sandwiched: Courtney in front of him, the window and balcony behind him. And all he could focus on was Courtney, looking unbelievably hot in spite of her immediate intentions to destroy him.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a yellow sleeve peeking out from underneath Courtney's bed, on the _opposite_ side from where he'd been searching. Of course—wasn't that where all lost stuff ended up? Under the bed? He ducked down and grabbed it quickly, flashing a charming smile in Courtney's direction. "Found it."

Courtney growled at him. Just _adorable_. "Any last words, Troglodyte?" That was a new one. He'd thought she was out of insulting names. (It _was_ an insult, right? It had to be.)

As quickly as she was advancing on him, though, it looked like he wasn't going to get the chance to find out. Duncan was about to sigh, disappointed with his wits for finally failing him, when he was struck with inspiration. He _did_ have a means of escape! Mentally apologizing to his own psyche, he grinned at Courtney. "Yeah, I have a couple of those." He stealthily slid the glass door open further behind his back and winked at her. "See you in the funny pages!"

Duncan abruptly turned and sprinted across the balcony at full speed, hollering, "_LOOK OUT BELOW_!" Half a second later, he made a full-on, headfirst, free-fall dive off the balcony, his undershirt flapping in the air.

* * *

Whoa. It looks like he's finally lost it, courtesy of our favorite CIT.

And now, some ridiculously long-winded notes from your two co-authors, which are rather funny this time around:

**From strayphoenix: **Then Duncan died. Story over. The end. Have a nice day. ;)

Lol, okay, so it's clearly a cliff hanger (and NOT the end. DON'T PANIC.) So how is shirtless Duncan going to make it? Shirtless? And how will Courtney react to Duncan's shirtless swan dive? SHIRTLESS? Did I mention Duncan was shirtless? This is important. I mean, just for life in general.

On a side note, this chapter contains one of my FAVORITE Courtney lines from any fanfic and either show. "I CAN'T BELIEVE THIS! How many other girls have you slept with in the last 48 hours?!" That was just such a Courtney line, Rina totally deserves $100,000 for it. Keep the reviews coming, True Believers! You haven't seen ANYTHING yet...

**From Contemperina: **Okay, I'll repeat: DON'T PANIC. This is _Duncan_ we're talking about. He always has a plan, even sans shirt. It's not like the shirt gave him plan-making superpowers or anything. That's absurd! It's _obviously_ in the Mohawk. And the Mohawk's still on his head, which means: He has a plan, involving shirtlessness.

Thanks for the support, everyone! It means more than you realize.

* * *

And now, an ultimatum: REVIEW IF YOU WANT DUNCAN TO LIVE! Don't put killing him past us. We're crazy.  
Just kidding. We're actually rather ordinary. (PS. He doesn't _actually _die.)

Thanks for reading! Please review. (:


	5. Never jump to conclusions

The reviews! You can't even fathom how much each and every one means to the two of us. Unless, of course, you all _can _fathom it and are reviewing because you know how it makes us indescribably happy every time a new review appears. In which case, continue on. Please. :)

If you'll recall, when we left Duncan, he had just taken a shirtless dive off Courtney's balcony to avoid death at her hands. And now, we learn his fate…

* * *

**Rule 5: Never jump to conclusions**

_Oh my God. I've killed him._

Courtney stared at the spot where Duncan had been standing a second ago in total shock. Okay, yes, she _had_ wanted him dead that second ago (for completely certifiable reasons!), but that was beside the point.

There was a fundamental difference between (1) holding a humid pool towel to someone's face until they stopped struggling and (2) causing that person to jump off a second floor balcony and imprint the concrete below with his hard skull! She winced as the image of Duncan, twisted and flat against the concrete, found its way into her mind.

This array of thoughts rushed by in all of a second as Courtney ran to the balcony rail in a surge of dread. Her soaked towel had dropped from her hand onto the bedroom floor, but she hadn't become aware of that fact, nor of the fact that the scream resounding in her head was actually _less_ in her head than she thought.

"_DUNCAN!"_

Sprinting across the balcony until she hit the wrought-iron railing (or _it_ hit _her_, it seemed. And in the gut, no less), she frantically looked to the ground below, yet she saw no mess of liquefied human being below. No sign of splattered remains or a chronically paralyzed delinquent. Instead, her gaze fell upon the swimming pool and the wide, angry ripples pulsing out from the deep end, where Duncan was treading water and smacking the side of his head. He was grinning enormously.

Courtney's knuckles cracked as she gripped the railing.

Justin, Cody, Izzy, and Bridgette all clapped and hooted from their various positions around the pool; even Ezekiel applauded a moment later, deducing that it was the socially acceptable thing to do. From a lounge chair near the pool's edge, Trent held a page of his music notepad over his head with a large '10' scribbled on it.

Courtney saw Duncan look up at her at the same time Duncan noticed Courtney looking down at him. She shouldn't have been surprised that the boy still had the _audacity_ to continue speaking with her.

"What do you think, Princess? Do I have a future in Olympic diving?" He took the sleeves of his shirt and tied them around his neck like a cape, so he could use his hands to help stay afloat. His clothes needed a wash anyway.

"You—_you_—!" Courtney was so livid, she couldn't force any words to come out. Her brain was in overdrive, circling around to try and come up with an insult she hadn't used before. Alas, she was hitting a brick wall while, at the same time, juggling thoughts along the lines of: _He's alive! So I _didn't_ kill him? Does this mean I need to kill him later? Argh! I should just kill him for making me _think_ I killed him!_ After a second or two of stammering and glaring at Duncan's smirk, she spluttered, "You—_**imbecile**_! You nearly gave me a heart-attack!"

But the second the words were out of her mouth, she realized they'd been the absolute wrong ones to say. Duncan's face lit up like a fireworks display, and Courtney knew immediately: that one exclamation was what he'd been trying to get out of her all morning. All _season_, even.

He slapped the surface of the water happily and pointed up at her, smiling. "Ah-hah! So you _do_ care about my wellbeing!" he called triumphantly.

Courtney gawked at him as she scrambled for a response to that (was there even a way to salvage her pride? She'd already _brilliantly_ admitted that he'd scared her—why didn't she just go and shout 'I love you!' from the hotel rooftop while she was at it?), but she then realized something: Duncan was smiling. Not smirking or sneering, but honestly _smiling_. That simple expression, along with the fact that his florescent green Mohawk had gone limp and off to one side—like the ears of a loveable puppy (and an adorable puppy, he was certainly _not_)—made him look like a completely different person from Courtney's aerial perspective.

She loosened her grip on the railing, the wrought iron design already imprinted on her palms, and hurriedly attempted to lock away her previous thoughts.

"The only thing I _care_ about is being inadvertently linked to your death!" she shot back, pushing away from the railing with a deep huff. She tried to keep a steady saturation of malice in her voice, but her brain was on a completely different set of gears. She promptly turned to go inside. "If anyone's going to murder you, it's going to be _me_, and I want the _full credit!_"

"'Til death do us part, then?" Duncan joked. The poolside observers chuckled from where they looked on.

Courtney glowered, halfway through the doorway. "You're lucky I don't throw a toaster in after you!" she broadcasted. With that, she slammed the glass frame shut.

Still grinning, Duncan began doing backstrokes across the pool. He sniggered at Katie and Sadie, who had scrambled out of the pool at Courtney's threat of a toaster, seeing that death by electrocution was _not_ a fun way to go.

"Chillax," he intoned as he passed them. "She's bluffing. She _totally_ doesn't have a toaster in her room." He quickly searched his memory, verifying that his statement was true, and then smirked. "I would know."

* * *

Duncan's morning encounters with Courtney (and the kamikaze dive that had immediately followed the second encounter) had sent him back to Square One, which was "sleep deprived and _starving_." Figuring that Courtney wasn't going anywhere for a few hours—it wasn't like she could up and doggie-paddle off the island resort—he grabbed an armful of buffet food and crashed onto one of the numerous lounge chairs spread around the pool. After a substantial amount of face-stuffage (since when had Chef's food become _good?_), he allowed himself to doze off, only awaking hours later when the sunburn on his bare back had become too much to endure.

The good news was: his clothes were completely dry from being in the hot sun for so long. The bad news: though he was now in possession of his undershirt, his skull shirt was still in his duffel bag, which was back in front of _Courtney's_ room. And the _worse_ news: he felt like wearing neither because his back was so burned, any clothing that touched it felt like sandpaper. He saw himself stealing some Aloe Vera out of Lindsay's room in the near future.

"Guess we learned about the potential harm of ultraviolent light rays the hard way, huh?" Cody commented as he passed by Duncan, who was busy trying to get up from his chair while causing himself the least amount of physical pain. Similar to Duncan's back, Cody's entire body was a shrimpy shade of pink.

"We can also learn," he growled in reply, "the potential harm of taking cracks at me when I'm already pissed off." He finally managed to straighten up and glared at Cody.

"Heh, heh… Or, we could go sit over here!" Cody concluded, picking up his pace as he crossed the deck to the lunch buffet leftovers. Duncan smirked proudly, glad all his romantic-comedy, lovesick-puppy crap with Courtney wasn't messing with his hard-earned street-cred.

Glancing around carefully (because yes, the burn extended onto his neck), he realized that Geoff and DJ were missing. If they were _still_ bickering, he was going to have to reconsider his choice of island companionship. He groaned, draped his shirt (carefully) around his neck, and snatched something edible from the buffet table before heading in the direction of the employee stairwell, where he'd left them.

Alas, his buds weren't in the stairwell. Nor the lobby, the staff quarters, or any of the other hotel floors. He did find Bridgette and Bunny (both in the spa) who told him that Geoff had run in for a quick make out session about two hours ago (with Bridgette, not Bunny), and Bridgette hadn't seen him since. Bunny just gave him a cutesy look that made Duncan want to kick it after all it had done to his reputation, but he resisted the urge—partly because Bridgette was watching, but mostly because the rodent was getting into enough life-threatening situations without his help.

He went to check the game room but had the same bad luck. He did find, however, that the game room was well stocked with old, arcade-style games, so he figured, what the heck? He wasn't in so much of a hurry that he couldn't appreciate the entertainment value of Big Buck Hunter and Pacman.

"Yo, Dunkster!" a voice called from the entryway a couple minutes later.

Duncan glanced up from the deer hunt game (ah, _memories_) as Geoff and DJ casually sauntered in.

"There you guys are!" he exclaimed, jamming the pause button and momentarily abandoning his game (which he had been _owning_.) He came over to them and crossed his arms. "I said the dude's punishment had to have long-term side effects, not _take_ a ridiculously long time."

"Sorry, man!" DJ apologized, shrugging. "It just took a while for us to come up with somethin' good."

Geoff, looking indignant, countered DJ. "Hey! I came up with plenty of great ideas that _you_ were completely against!"

"Dropping a hammer on him?" DJ looked appalled. "Tying him to an _electric chair_? You call _those_ good ideas?" he screeched.

"Well, they _are!_"

Duncan rolled his eyes—he had made an _excellent_ choice of companionship, most _definitely_—and interrupted with a groan. "Will you two stop bickering like chicks and fill me on what happened already?"

Grinning, Geoff stood at attention and recounted their tale. "Well, after you left, Deej and me tied him up and locked him in the darkroom for a couple hours, and we made scary, spooky ghost noises until he flipped out."

DJ nodded his head solemnly, almost ashamed of what he had done. "The dude was seriously _freaked_."

Their ringleader, though, didn't look impressed. Hadn't he taught them better? Duncan had been expecting something a little more creative. "…Really? That's it?"

Geoff's grin didn't waver as he added, "Did we mention we turned the thermostat down to freezing and stripped him to his tightey-whiteys?"

Now Duncan smirked, leaning up against the pinball machine behind him. "Better…" He nodded his head slightly, contemplating their work.

"_And_ did we mention that he, _oh_, may or may not still be down there?"

DJ's hands flew to his mouth, and his dark eyes grew wide. "You didn't let him _out_?" He shrieked and turned to Geoff, instantly horrified.

Duncan watched, in stitches from laughter. _That_ was more like it! He held up a hand, and Geoff met it with a high five.

"Brilliant, man," he complimented, straightening up with a small hiccup. "I approve."

Geoff whipped off his hat and held it over his heart proudly. "Well, I try."

"Oh, man!" DJ squealed, bolting towards the door. "I've gotta let him out!"

Geoff grabbed him by the arm (using _both_ his arms) in an attempt to keep him from getting too far. "_After_ the poolside, dude!" the party guy told him, leaning back with his full weight as DJ struggled to escape his grasp. "Dude's just getting what's coming to him! Bridgette calls it karmo!"

Duncan had tuned them out at the mention of the pool; he would have to explain all the afternoon's activities to them later. "Yeah. Thanks, but no thanks," he informed them, heading back to Big Buck Hunter. "I've had enough of that pool today."

"Not _pool_, dude," Geoff corrected, finally managing to haul DJ back into the game room. "Pool_side_."

Duncan picked up the plastic rifle again and aimed it at a deer, shooting it right through the chest for 200 points. "_Right_…" he drawled, rolling his eyes and gesturing to himself. "Failed Freshman Lit, remember?"

DJ, finally convinced against abandoning his friends (by Geoff's incessant tugging), explained. "About 'round sunset every night, we all get together around the pool and talk and jam and stuff."

Turning from the screen, Duncan could only ask, "_Why_?"

Geoff shrugged, still keeping one eye on DJ in case he tried to make a break for it. "Mostly because Chris forces us to." It was the honest truth.

"But, the chicks seem to dig it," DJ added, "so it's cool." He made a face, forming air quotations with his hands. "'Bonding,' they call it."

The three boys were unable to suppress shivers at the idea. "Girl bonding," however described, always sounded painful, humiliating, and at least ten times more intimidating than anything that could be classified as "guy bonding" (and "guy bonding" almost always included profanity and/or weapons of mass destruction.)

But, because he, in essence, had no choice but to attend (and because his inner weatherman said that there was a 99 percent chance of forever-rule-abiding Courtney's attendance), Duncan groaned and grabbed a sheet of hotel stationary off a nearby coffee table. After hastily scribbling, "_Duncan's game. Touch and __die_" he slapped it on Big Buck Hunter's pause screen and grabbed his shirt from where he'd tossed it over the air hockey table. With that, the three boys started walking back in the direction of the pool.

Hoping to gather some background information and, with a little luck, find a way out of their required get-together, Duncan asked, "Is Chris usually _at_ these things?"

"Sometimes," Geoff responded, leading the way from the game room to the pool. He'd walked the path a dozen times since his elimination.

"When he feels like bugging us," DJ clarified, looking over his shoulder at Duncan, "which is a little more often than we'd like."

Duncan, bringing up the rear, groaned again. Why did they let Chris continue to haunt them even _after_ elimination? Playa Des Losers was supposed to be the Heaven of reality TV, right? Chris hanging around in the shadows just made it feel like a higher ring of Hell. It made no sense to him! He threw his hands up in irritation, wincing as his reddened, bare back prickled.

"Why hasn't anyone taken a sniper to him yet?" he demanded of his buds, exasperated. "I mean, it's not like you guys have anything to _lose_ anymore, right?" Regretfully, Duncan realized that "you guys," in a disappointing and aggravating turn of events, now included himself as well.

DJ didn't miss a beat, responding to Duncan's first question. "And take the honor away from you, bro? No chance."

Geoff winked, hanging back to elbow Duncan in the ribs conspiratorially. "We've just been waiting for your signal."

Okay, so maybe his choice in friends wasn't as bad as he'd thought, Duncan mused. Grinning evilly, he lightly tossed his shirt around his neck and rubbed his hands together in time with his steps. "Eight days, boys. We're gonna get some _serious_ damage done by closing time."

The conversation ended as they arrived at the pool; each was preoccupied, scouting out a place around the pool to call his own for the time being.

Bridgette, the only person still in her bathing suit, was sitting on the pool rim off to one side, talking Women's Semi-Pro Half Pipe with Cody, Tyler, and Harold (who were really just nodding along, having no idea what she was talking about.) Justin and Eva stood behind, working out on borrowed gym equipment. Trent, on the other side, was also sitting on the pool rim, barefoot and strumming something soft on his guitar. Katie, Sadie, Izzy, Beth, and Lindsay surrounded him on both sides, swooning.

Glancing around at everyone in their little groups, Duncan noticed that Courtney was the exception to the cliquey rule. (Heck, even His Royal Highness, King Antisocial Noah was watching his toenails grow in the company of Leshawna and Ezekiel.) But Courtney sat off to the side in a standard lounge chair, reading a tabloid magazine that featured _Lindsay_ of all people on the cover. She glanced up at the three stooges, who'd made a fair amount of noise upon entering the pool deck area, but she quickly resumed reading her magazine, eyes narrowed.

Duncan smirked at her reaction, quickly weighing his options: on the one hand, he could just keep walking with Geoff and DJ, find a place along the pool with the others, and ignore her. On the other, substantially more entertaining hand, he could plop down next to her, start up a useless conversation about something perverted, and provoke her into physical abuse. But then again, that would have been doing exactly what she was _expecting_ him to do (he was almost positive she didn't usually grip her magazines like they were baseball bats), and on that particular night, Duncan felt like being unpredictable.

He'd already gotten her to sort of admit that she liked him (e.g. the suicide-but-not balcony dive), and _that_ was a goal he'd been working on since day three on the island. Heck, in those last few weeks of pranking and challenges at Wawanakwa, he'd started feeling like the cliché, token delinquent, pulling those old, unoriginal pranks. He typically had more ingenuity than that—more style! Honestly, though, he hadn't been able help himself; the other campers just brought out the James Dean in him.

Deciding to satisfy both his desire to be bothersome and his desire to throw Courtney for a loop by not ruining her evening for once, Duncan swiftly decided to ruin someone else's.

"Hey, Elvis!" he called, startling Trent, who faltered on a chord. "Know any songs you _didn't_ write yourself?"

Trent, perpetually Zen, didn't even take offense at Duncan's interruption. The music stopped as he thought for a moment, prompting Katie and Sadie to groan in disappointment. Then, sending a conniving grin in Duncan's direction, he started strumming once more, crooning along to the notes:

"_Near…Far…Wher_EV_er you are, I believe that my heart will_—"

"**Ack**!" Duncan yelped, instinctively clapping his hands over his ears. "Okay! _Okay! Stop!_"

Trent continued strumming, as if he couldn't hear him over the tunes of Celine Dion. "_STOP_ already!" Duncan hissed, stomping through the crowd of girls around the guitarist to glare at him menacingly. "You made your _point_, okay?"

In response, Trent flawlessly transitioned into another, more upbeat song, grinning all the while. Duncan gingerly removed his hands from his ears, stalking back over to DJ and Geoff. "Forget I said _anything_."

"We usually do," Harold muttered, but his reply was lost to Duncan, too busy punching Geoff and DJ, who knew better than to laugh at his phobia but were still failing to contain their amusement.

Somewhere behind him, Duncan could have sworn he heard Courtney snickering, and he, in the middle of whooping up on a brick wall (known to most as DJ), found himself about to go back on his decision to leave her in peace.

It was Lindsay, however, oblivious to Duncan's mood as well as its direct causes, who interrupted his train of thought. She smiled happily and said to no one in particular, "You know, I don't know why I'm so excited right now. I had to wake up like, way super early, so I should be really _not_ excited, but I am _so_ excited right now!"

Noah, without glancing up from the most interesting thing in his near-vicinity, his nails, replied sarcastically, "You seem to be gifted with defying all Laws of Logic. Whoopee for you."

His answer, however, only served to further excite the blonde. "Oh my gosh! That is so cool!" She clasped her hands together, trying to recall exactly what it was the Laws of Logic talked about. "…Does that mean I can _fly_ and stuff now?

"Um, I think you're talking about the Laws of _Gravity_…" Beth clarified.

She was about to continue when Duncan stepped in, satisfied that DJ and Geoff were both sufficiently bruised. Making the universal motion for "crazy as a bedbug" with his finger and rolling his eyes so his friends could see (he'd already forgotten why he'd been beating on them), he pushed Beth aside. Facing Lindsay, he said, "_Congrats_, Barbie. Why don't you soar over to the closest Burger Shack and grab me a snack?"

Lindsay rolled her own baby blues in response, dismissing the idea with a flip of her wrist. "As if!" She grimaced and hopped up before continuing. "Do you know how many calories those things have? I'm getting a salad. One of those yummy ones with the croutons and those little nuts and—"

Seeming that the girl truly believed she could fly, Lindsay was in the process of opening her arms wide for take-off when she slipped (Duncan had no idea on _what_ as the pool edge was both dry _and_ flat) and fell forward into the pool, her loud shriek immediately turning into watery gargles.

Tyler immediately jumped to his feet, panicking. "Lindsay! Don't worry! I'll save you!" he called, ripping off his jacket Hasselhoff-style and jumping in after her. It wasn't until he'd hit the water and started sinking that he realized he really couldn't swim all that well either.

As the two floundered around in the water, shrieking and trying to state afloat, Duncan peered around, noticing that he wasn't the only one in stitches from laughter. Actually, the only one _not_ in stitches (besides Eva, who didn't laugh unless causing something or someone physical pain) was Bridgette. With a sigh, she slipped down from the pool edge after the pair of airheads and pushed them up out of the water as most of the former campmates hollered with laughter.

"Are you okay, Lindsay?" Tyler asked with a deep cough, scrambling over to her side as if he'd been the one to save her. Bridgette rolled her eyes as she treaded water, happy to have saved their lives (for the third time) but annoyed by the lack of appreciation.

Lindsay cocked her head in confusion as she coughed water on Tyler and sat up. "Wait…" Another cough. "Who are you again?"

Tyler didn't have time to answer because suddenly, the entire pool area was covered in glittery, pink smoke, and Lindsay wasn't the only one hacking up a lung. As he coughed, Duncan pulled at the shirt he had around his shoulders and used it to fan the air around him in an attempt to clear the smoke away, wondering where the fairytale glitter gas leak was.

However, after a second or two, the air cleared on its own, revealing Chris McLean in the midst of all the former campers. A fairytale glitter gas leak would have been preferable, Duncan quickly decided.

Seemingly immune to the pink fog, Chris addressed them all brightly. "Greetings, campers!" This was met by a general muttering of inappropriate things, many of which would need to be bleeped out in post-production. Paying no mind to this or anyone else, Chris trotted over to where Duncan stood. Duncan flung his shirt over his aching shoulders and cast his former host a look of death.

"So, Duncan," Chris started in his skater drawl. "I heard from a little birdie that a lil' something _something_ went down this morning," he said, winking at Duncan like the two of them were privy to an inside joke. "Have you been enjoying your _stay_ at our luxurious _hotel_ so far?"

Duncan glared at McLean and cracked his knuckles threateningly. "Have you been enjoying your _face_ in its current _arrangement_ so far?"

Unfazed, Chris rubbed his chin-stubble proudly. "Very much so, actually. It's sold millions." This comment was followed by multiple sounds of disbelief. "Okay, fine, thousands!" he amended after a second.

Duncan's glare didn't waver as he tightly crossed his arms over his chest, hoping to develop heat vision on the spot (one could only dream), so he could more easily set the man on fire.

Seeing that Duncan planned on giving no further response, Chris sighed dramatically. "You _know_ how our budget's been on this show," he said in explanation, putting on his business face. "We had to lower our expenses, so we cut down on the individual rooms to save green." He rubbed his thumb together with his fingers in the universal symbol for cash. "Do you have any idea how much it costs to maintain this entire place at a toasty—_Hey!_" Chris was forced to duck and cover as a coconut flew over his head.

Duncan, along with the rest of the gathered campers, whipped around to see that Courtney had abandoned her magazine for a second coconut, which she was dangerously tossing in her throwing arm. She glowered at Chris fiercely, her expression containing enough pent-up fury to power a small country.

Duncan mused (not for the first time) that if looks could kill, Courtney would have a promising career ahead of her. As a _mercenary_.

"No throwing geographically incorrect props at the host's head!" Chris shouted at her, obviously ruffled by the projectile and how close it had come to his thousand-dollar face.

Courtney dropped the coconut and reached behind her chair to grab a toboggan (God knew where _that_ had come from), brandishing it instead. "If you _insist_…" she responded with a growl, taking a single step forward as Chris threw up his hands to protect his face.

"Okay! Okay!" the host surrendered, reaching into the front pocket of his shirt. "Here's your room key, Duncan." Smirking, Duncan triumphantly swiped it from where Chris was dangling it from his hand. His grin, however, faded when the man leaned down and whispered, "You know, you really should be thanking me for giving you the hook-up in the first place, dude." He winked and then raised the volume of his voice, switching back to a tone of annoyance, saying, "Sheesh! I swear, none of you were born with a sense of humor!"

"No one was born with your sense of _sadism_, white boy!" Leshawna shot back in response as Duncan pocketed his room key (room **10B, **this time) and returned to where Geoff and DJ were standing. He was trying to pretend Chris hadn't said anything, so he wouldn't have to owe the man he despised any sort of favors later on.

Once he'd arrived, he glanced over his shoulder in time to see that Courtney had released the toboggan and was throwing herself back into her lawn chair, still looking pissed as Hell. He couldn't help but smirk at her expression. Glancing up at Duncan only to find his eyes on her, Courtney yanked open her magazine quickly and with unnecessary force. She shoved her nose in it like nothing had happened, which only made Duncan's smirk wider.

She _so_ wanted him.

"ANYWAY," Chris resumed, smoothing out his hair and recollecting his hostly grace, "for the next show, I need some seriously twisted, wicked dare suggestions for our last three contestants: Gwen, Heather, and Owen." He whipped out a notepad from his shirt pocket and turned to the gathered teens. "Who wants to go first?"

It was like someone had set off the starting gunshot at the World Talk-a-Thon. Everyone began shouting their ideas at once, their voices echoing off the glass doors of the hotel and the surface of the pool. To Duncan, it all sounded like one giant, merged clamor, but Chris was taking notes very seriously, nodding every few seconds. He had to wonder how Chris managed it; he himself could barely hear what Geoff and DJ were saying, mere centimeters away from him.

Once all the echoes had died down, Noah asked, incredulous, "Did you actually _get_ all that?"

Pocketing his notebook, Chris slapped his hands together and cheerfully replied, "All the parts that counted!" Taking one more look at all of them, he announced, "Well, that's that, dudes and ladies. Can I entrust Bridgette to keep you all alive?"

Bridgette, hanging onto the nearest edge of the pool and looking a bit nervous, was already picturing a pool full of drowned teenagers. "Well—"

"Great!" Chris interrupted, reaching into his pocket. "In that case, I'm taking the night off. Later!" There was another smokescreen of pink and lavender dust (like fairytale dragon puke, Duncan decided), and Chris was gone.

* * *

Dang. Like Houdini, that Chris is. Like Houdini.

And now, some ridiculously long-winded notes from your two co-authors, which aren't all that serious this time around:

**From strayphoenix**: Chris, World's Greatest Matchmaker. BE AFRAID. Kudos to **CarmillaD** for almost accurately estimating the opening segment of this chapter in her last review. Seriously, she wasn't in on it at all! Glad to know _someone_ was paying attention. ;)

So, this was another chapter we had to split because of its length and awesomeness levels (17.5 on a scale of 10.) Trying to find a way to split it was hard, so you'll see when we post next time (if we get our reviews…) that it ties almost seamlessly together. Duncan's sunburn was an unusual development, but **Rina** and I kind of clung on to it, so you'll see more reference to it later in the story. Besides, we'll take _any_ excuse to get Duncan shirtless. _ANY_ excuse.

Duncan: "Oh look! A butterfly!" *peels off shirt*

**From Contemperina: **And so we introduce the idea of… (Dun dun dunnnn!) The pool_side_. You'll be seeing a few of those, with the expected drama (this is T_D_I, after all) unfolding at each. So get excited! I know we are.

Did you catch Geoff's _Truth or Hammer/Anvil/Electrocution_ reference? It would seem that he had a sick mind, even back in the innocent days of TDI…

Now, I take this space to bring up Duncan's whooping of DJ and Geoff for laughing at him. I don't really know why, but I _love_ this idea! (It was **stray**'s, by the way. She gets the credit.) It just seems so perfect to me. Can't you see it? Even though it's pointless, Duncan still feels the need to establish dominance over his buds. Then, two seconds later, he forgets why he was beating them in the first place. This, my friends, is why we love him. :)

We feel like you should review if you caught how _completely relevant_ Duncan's "Do I have a future in Olympic diving?" quote was. The Winter Olympics _are_ in Vancouver right now, after all. _Or_, you could let us know if, now that we've told you about it, you really wish you'd caught that reference. _OR_, you might still review, even if you really couldn't care less either way.

Does that cover everyone? We hope so.

Thanks for reading! Please review. (:


	6. Never say what you don't mean

AHHHHH! This response is postively insane, especially in regards to all of you fantastic reviewers. I (Rina) am personally extremely sorry that I haven't had time to respond to every one of you in a PM like I generally try to do, but I can't speak for **stray** since I have no idea what she's doing review-wise. Maybe she's sorry too…?

Anyway, one bear-hug goes to each and every one of you.

If you'll recall, when we left Duncan, Chris had just pulled a Houdini act at the poolside. And now, we learn his fate…

* * *

**Rule 6: Never say what you don't mean**

"Well, that was random," Eva commented, working her biceps. She hadn't stopped pumping her (one kilogram) dumbbells since Duncan had gotten there, and that included Chris's arrival, interference, and hasty departure.

"I know!" Lindsay agreed, nodding enthusiastically. "I couldn't even hear anyone's dares!"

"What was yours, G?" Ezekiel asked, trying to utilize the correct terminology.

Lindsay answered, folding her arms proudly, "To shave off _all_ your hair!"

Everyone stared at her in surprise. Even _Duncan_ was pretty impressed by that. He'd never have guessed that the blonde bombshell (whose IQ was so low it put the stupidity of _pigeons_ to shame) had a mean streak.

"Not bad, Lindsay," Trent commented as he began strumming on his guitar again now that Chris was gone.

Lindsay merely shrugged, adding, "Well, that's what I'd want to do to Heather for being such a—" She began running through her list of expletives, _more_ editing for the poor suckers in post-production.

Beth giggled (though she was blushing at Lindsay's coarse language.) "Remind me to never play Truth or Dare against _you_," she said, pointing playfully.

It was as if someone had put a dollar into the _'Izzy Go Crazy!' _toy. "Like, OMG! MD! BM! A! MG!" In response to all the blank stares she received, she elaborated. "That's 'oh my god' in English, French, Russian, Turkish, and German. _Duh_. Anyway, we should totally play Truth or Dare!" she exclaimed, beginning to bounce in excitement.

Sadie's hand shot up in the air eagerly. "I second Izzy!"

Lindsay's hand shot up as well, after a second. "Ooh! I second Izzy, too!"

"You can't _double_ second someone," Harold corrected, but no one paid him any mind.

Katie glanced around, counting heads. "We have enough to play, right? Who's in?"

Duncan glanced at DJ and Geoff, who eyed the rest of the guys around the pool. Truth or Dare? With an (almost) equal amount of boys and girls? _Unsupervised_? Duncan snickered; he was down for it as of _yesterday_. Unanimously, the boys raised their hands, even Noah and Ezekiel. (Ezekiel probably did it to fit in, but Duncan couldn't figure out the bookworm's motivation for the life of him.)

The girls were a little more reluctant, which Duncan found strange since they'd come up with the idea in the first place. "Well…" Beth began, playing with her fingers and looking at Lindsay uncertainly. "I'll only play if _you_ play…"

Eva put down her dumbbells at last, only to punch a fist into her open hand. "You're _all_ going down," she said, glaring at those nearest her.

Leshawna shrugged from where she sat, leaning back on her arms. "As long as they don't air it, I'm cool. Let's go!"

Duncan turned around to the brunette in her lounge chair, who seemed set on ignoring him. "You in, Princess?" he called back to her, louder, he knew, than was strictly necessary.

Courtney scoffed behind her tabloid as if to say _'What kind of drugs are _you_ on?'_ before replying, "Absolutely not! I've had enough adventures at this place to last me until evacuation day."

Okay, so she needed a little motivation, Duncan concluded. "What's the matter, peaches?" he asked, flapping his arms like wings and clucking in mockery.

Before he could even say the C word, Tyler had bolted to his feet as if he'd been electrocuted.

"WHERE IS IT?!" he shrieked, looking around wildly. _"WHERE IS IT?!"_

Duncan briefly shot Tyler an '_Okay_ then…' expression and raised an eyebrow. Though she was entrusted with his life, Bridgette ignored Tyler as well, realizing that his outburst was a false alarm. (They'd been on the island together for a few weeks already, and Bridgette had long-since gotten tired of saving him from nothing.)

She turned to the girl in the lounge chair, proceeding to do Duncan's job for him. "C'mon, Courtney," she prodded gently, swimming over to the area closest to her friend, which put her right under Duncan, Geoff, and DJ (and inadvertently gave the three a generous view of the curve of her cleavage—_hoo-boy_.) "We only have a few days left before we're all split up," Bridgette insisted, unaware of their stares. "It'll be fun!"

"Ugh, _famous last words_," Courtney muttered as she weighed her options. Grudgingly concluding that Bridgette had a valid point, she set down her magazine. Even though she hardly gave a hoot about bonding with the rest of the campers (especially—no, _particularly_—Duncan), she was smart enough to know that it would work to her benefit to play. She didn't want to come off as antisocial to the viewing audiences when even Noah and Ezekiel were playing.

With a sigh, she strolled over to the Bass boys, pulling her lawn chair along behind her and squeezing in between Geoff and DJ to avoid standing next to Duncan (who was shaking his head rapidly, quickly reciting to himself the process of disassembling a car to fight his involuntary hard-on, courtesy of Bridgette's chest.)

"Okay," Courtney agreed tentatively, sitting back down, "but only if I don't have to do anything"—she began ticking off on her fingers—"gross, perverted, harmful to my health, harmful to others, or traceable to me in any way in the future."

Luckily, Courtney's lengthy speech had given Duncan enough time to recollect himself (before either the girls or Geoff noticed his lapse in attention), and he responded to her spiel with a (hopefully) casual sounding scoff of his own. "Geez, Princess. You might as well not play then."

Courtney narrowed her eyes at him, rolling up her magazine in one hand and wielding it like a machete. "Don't make me get the toboggan again," she warned in what she hoped was a dangerously flat tone.

She'd meant that last bit threateningly, Duncan was sure, but he could sense that she didn't really mean it by the lack of any real malice in her tone. So he let her be with nothing more than a careless shrug. Now, it was only a matter of time.

It was actually kind of funny how he'd learned to read her so well in such a short time. At that moment, though, a frightening thought came to him and Duncan tensed up. He glanced at Courtney sidelong, struggling to keep the same expression on his face, wondering: _Crap_. Am _I_ as readable to _her_?

To Courtney, however, Duncan was being about as readable as a book on the philosophy of quantum physics, written in Chinese. Not knowing what to say, she just gave him an odd look, to which he turned away. Courtney had expected him to rise to the toboggan challenge, considering the way things had been going for them since her rude awakening that morning, and though the fact that he was keeping his distance was slightly suspicious and highly unusual, it was also (though she'd never admit it aloud) comforting, in a strange sort of way.

She loosened her hold on her magazine as Harold started in on another one of his dissertations. "I propose that we set up rules and regulations regarding what we can and cannot do per the national rule of—"

Before he could get any further, he was mercifully kicked into the pool by Duncan, after which the delinquent crossed in front of DJ and plopped down beside Courtney's legs on the lawn chair, smirking to himself. Courtney shifted her legs away from him in repulsion, but it didn't bother her new arrival. Some things—like picking on Harold—never failed to pick him right up.

"_Thanks_, Duncan," Bridgette snapped in a rare moment of annoyed sarcasm. Releasing the pool edge, she swam over and rescued the floundering Harold. "Because I'm _not_ already responsible for keeping all 18 of you alive."

Duncan remained unashamed, merely shrugging in response. "C'mon, Malibu," he insisted, not bothering to fight off his smirk, born from the bird's-eye view of her he'd gotten just a few moments ago. "We all know you got this."

"Yeah, babe!" Geoff seconded, squatting down as Bridgette shoved Harold out of the pool (and along the pool deck on his face. That was going to leave some scratches.) "You're, like, Queen of the Ocean or something!"

Bridgette pulled herself out of the water as well, sitting up on the pool rim beside DJ. Geoff took the spot next to her, and Harold sat up, rubbing his scraped mug. "I'll…try to take that as a compliment," Bridgette said after a moment, offering her boyfriend a half smile as he draped an arm over her shoulders.

The rest of the campers began making and clarifying the rules (Can _anyone_ pick the dare? What if you can't think of something?) and regulations. At about the same time, Duncan turned to Courtney, bored of the current action. He figured he didn't need to pay attention; even if he knew the rules, Duncan wouldn't follow them. What was the point?

"What, no 'That was so _not funny_, Duncan!'?" he asked in a mock imitation of her own reaction to his hook-man story, all those weeks ago. He pulled the shirt off his shoulders, tossing it under the chair, and stealthily placed a hand on one of Courtney's calves. "No commentary on my nonexistent maturity?"

"Nope," Courtney replied briefly, flipping through her magazine calmly (even though it wasn't anywhere near as interesting as she was pretending it was—seriously, _Lindsay_ was on the cover.) "You're free to beat up on Harold to your heart's content." She convinced herself she was only talking to Duncan about this because it would give her a break from her daily 'mutilation of Harold' schedule. As for the hand-on-calf thing… Though not entirely unpleasant, she blindly swatted his hand away like a mosquito.

"Really?" Duncan asked, pleasantly surprised by this lack of restrictions. He took back his hand to pump his fist. "Bad-ass!"

Courtney was about to reply, "Hell _yes_," but she caught herself, bringing up the magazine to hide her expression. Then, in her 'pick a fight with Duncan' voice, she glanced at him and his scarlet back, looking over the top of the glossy pages, and said coolly, "It's not like you would stop beating up someone just because _I_ asked anyway."

Duncan smiled charmingly and winked at her. "Only if you said 'please'."

Courtney was saved from having to figure out a response to that comment (compliment?) as Lindsay started the Truth or Dare game. Apparently, blondeness made her voice carry. "Okay!" she began. "So, Izzy: Truth or dare?"

"Man, that is such a _loaded_ question!" the redhead replied, scratching her head quickly before deciding. "I'm going to have to say dare, Ms. Trebek. Totally!"

Lindsay furrowed her impeccably plucked eyebrows. "Ms. Trebek? Who's—"

Beth patted her friend's shoulder. "Just forget about it, Linds."

"Oh, all right." Lindsay shrugged, tapping a manicured finger against her cherry glossed lips. "Hmmm…I dare you to—"

Noah swiftly intercepted Lindsay's dare and finished with, "Shut up and keep quiet for ten minutes!"

Izzy grinned hugely and brushed off Noah's task with ease. "Piece of cake!" she exclaimed, making a zipping motion across her lips. Duncan caught Noah smirking and brushing his knuckles off on his shoulder, and he secretly congratulated the bookworm on having a dark side worthy of Vader.

Cody glanced at Izzy uncertainly as she grinned like the Cheshire Cat, tapping her hands on her thighs in rhythm to whatever song played in her head. "What happens if we can't do our dares?" he asked, obviously doubtful of Izzy's ability to keep her mouth shut for a full sixth of an hour.

"You're eliminated from the game, _duh!"_ Harold supplied, rolling his eyes.

Trent stepped in, saying, "But you're also eliminated from—" He cut himself off, though, interrupted by Izzy gesturing wildly from her seat.

"Is she okay?" Sadie asked worriedly.

"Oh my God!" Katie shrieked, immediately picking up on her BFF's train of thought. "She's having a seizure! Let her talk, let her talk!"

"_NOOO!_" Noah screamed with an uncharacteristic amount of emotion, jumping to his feet. Noticing people's shocked stares, he shrunk back down into his seat, his upper lip curled into a minor snarl. "I mean, _whatever_."

Standing beside Izzy, DJ calmed them all, answering, "She's fine. It's just sign language! She wants to know if Eva will take a truth or a dare."

Courtney and Duncan gave him weird looks at the same time, unaware of how eerily similar their expressions looked and of the fact that the other was doing the same. "You _speak_ sign language?" Courtney inferred.

"Had to learn it to lead my momma's church group," DJ explained proudly. "Most of the ladies leave their hearing aids at home on Sundays."

Duncan face palmed and wiped his hand down to cover his mouth. He was glad DJ had muscle because he'd honestly seen more spine in sea mollusks.

"What kind of a cream puff do you take me for?" Eva demanded in reply to Izzy's signed question. "Dare! Bring it on!"

DJ translated Izzy's quick and seemingly wild gesturing with ease. "Steal…Justin's…mirror…from him."

All eyes turned to Justin. After a moment of empty (but still gorgeous) staring, he seemed to realize what "steal Justin's mirror" meant for him.

"Oh, you mean _this_ mirror?" he asked innocently, pulling out a hand mirror from the pocket of his shorts and grinning into it. He smiled so brightly, the light reflected once off the mirror, again off Ezekiel's bling, and directly into Beth's eyes across the pool.

"_**AH**_!" she screamed, falling backwards onto the concrete. "The calcium infused whiteness! It _burns_!"

Ignoring Beth's flailing, Eva glared at Justin, holding out her hand for the mirror. "Think you'll have a career in modeling _casts_, pretty boy?" she growled.

Justin thought about that one for a brief moment and then reluctantly handed over his mirror, only to pull out another one and begin fixing his hair, smiling once more at his reflection.

"Um…Izzy says _all_ his mirrors," DJ added when Izzy started making angry motions again.

Without asking this time, Eva grabbed Justin by the ankles and began shaking him upside-down. Mirrors of all shapes and sizes tumbled from his pockets, exploding into shards on the ground. Hardly distracted (even though she was probably up to about 400 years of bad luck by that point), she called, "Bridgette! Dare or double dare?"

Bridgette blinked up in alarm. "Um…I thought it was _Truth_ or Dare," she stated sheepishly, knowing that Eva still had it out for her, even after the revenge she'd wrought back on the island.

Eva dropped Justin on his (extremely expensive) head of hair and spat, "Well, you thought wrong."

"I dare Bridgette to spend one day without kissing Geoff!" Lindsay said suddenly, too excited by her idea to worry about or notice that she might have been invoking the wrath of Eva.

At Lindsay's words, Geoff began to spasm, twitching and jerking in all directions. Very few things startled Duncan, but even he took a step back. It looked like Geoff was going to transform into a werewolf or something! (And that was something Duncan couldn't put on his résumé of things he'd beaten up.)

"_One_…whole…_day_?!" Geoff asked between spasms.

Courtney, seeing his reaction and hoping to end the awkward convulsing, amended quickly, "Okay, uh, how about _half_ a day?"

"Starting _tomorrow_," Trent added, also concerned.

Leshawna laughed as Geoff kept on twitching. "Looks like Party Boy's gonna have more of a problem with that than Surfer Girl!"

Bridgette giggled, not pleased with the dare but _hugely_ relieved that she'd been spared from a dare from Eva, which would have undoubtedly been far, far worse. "Geoff may not make it, and it's not even his dare!" she laughed, patting her boyfriend on the shoulder. He tried to pull her in for a make-out session right then and there, likely hoping to catch up for the half-day he would miss, but Bridgette held him off. "So, Duncan," she continued, turning to him with a smile, restraining Geoff with one of her hands. "I shouldn't even have to ask, but—"

"Truth," he said instantly, smirking. Being unpredictable was turning into a theme for the night, and he liked looking at everyone's stunned expressions. (God, he hoped there were still a few cameras around Playa.)

Indeed, truth was the last thing anyone had expected from him. All the people around him sat blinking in shock, including his friends and Courtney (because she technically wasn't a friend and therefore couldn't be labeled as such.)

"_Seriously_?" DJ asked, regaining control of his jaw.

"Hey, I had the _option_ last time I checked," Duncan replied smartly as he crossed his arms over his bare chest, challenging them. "Lay it on me," he said, stretching out his arms, palms up.

"Okay then," Justin answered, getting up from where Eva had dropped him and brushing off his (bare and deliciously ripped) Pecs. "What did you go to juvy for?"

Duncan winced, internally kicking himself for his stupidity. _Brilliant, Einstein. You should've just gone with the damn dare_. He thought quickly and offered aloud, "If you let me pass on that one, I'll answer _two_ other questions." He hoped they'd take the bait and not mull over why that was the un-askable question.

Harold started up immediately. "You can't just—!"

"You've got a deal, man," Trent said, cutting him off. Apparently, the promise of hearing something honest from 'Tall, Dark, and Duncan' was worth a slight bending of the rules. "Why do Celine Dion cardboard cutouts freak you out so much?"

"Uh, have you ever _seen_ one?" Duncan asked, rolling his eyes. "What's _not_ scary about it?"

"That's not an answer," Eva stated, glaring at him as Justin picked up shards of his mirrors, careful to avoid cutting up his tender hands. Duncan sighed; leave it to Eva to make him look like a wuss in under thirty seconds.

He cursed under his breath and glanced over to see if Courtney was interested (she definitely was—Duncan _not_ taking an opportunity to complete a dare and make an ass out of himself? Would wonders never cease?) before answering with a quick and sharp, "Fine. When I was a kid, my brothers bought one of her standees from the music store down the street and put it in my window. It was the middle of the night, my parents were out of town, and I thought there was some guy at my window sent to kill me, so I spazzed. It was just my luck that they picked _Celine Dion_ to be the object of my trauma."

"Tough, man," Geoff sympathized, coming up for air in between making out with Bridgette.

"No kidding." Duncan turned to his other side casually. "So now that that's over with, DJ—"

"Hey! You said dos questions!" Izzy interrupted, speaking aloud again.

Noah buried his face in his hands, moaning. "_Ohhh_, I knew it was too good to _last_…"

Giving a short laugh and raising an eyebrow at Izzy, Duncan asked, "Got any proof?" even though he knew already she didn't and that it was a rather stupid question anyway. Everyone must have remembered the deal; he'd made it less than two minutes ago.

"Uh…"

Izzy struggled to think of "proof", but it was Courtney who stepped up and asked a second question, finally discarding her magazine. "What all have you gotten arrested for?"

Duncan twisted around to face her, his burnt back prickling uncomfortably at the motion, and tried concealing his annoyance with a (moderately) civil tone, reserved just for Courtney. "I already said I wasn't _answering_ that one, sugar."

"It's a different question, you illiterate mongrel," Courtney spat, sneering at the pet name and rolling her eyes exaggeratedly.

Conceding that she had a valid point, Duncan huffed and leaned back on one arm, close enough to Courtney's legs that she could feel the heat radiating off his back like a microwave. Ticking off his numerous offenses on his fingers, he began, "All right, so there's vandalism, B and E, illegal marketing, public nudity, possession of stolen goods, carjacking, joyriding, fraud, armed robbery, throwing eggs at—oh, no, wait, that one fell under vandalism…"

Leshawna's jaw had gone slack and hung there, fallen open. "Did you just say 'armed robbery'?!" Duncan was a delinquent, yeah, but weapons? _Real_ weapons??

"Oh my Glory! Did you just say 'public nudity'?!" Beth asked, equally appalled.

"Did you say 'beanie'?" Lindsay added in surprise and confusion. "Because while I can _totally_ see how that's like, a fashion crime and everything, I didn't know you could go to jail for that!"

"Dude!" Cody exclaimed. "How do you live without the cops on your tail?"

Duncan sighed, having expected a similar reaction, and sat back up to address Leshawna. "Okay, let me clear this up: in official police transcripts, paint guns are classified as serious _legal arms_." To Beth, on the opposite side of the pool, he smirked. "Don't get too excited. It was just a onetime deal. New Year's stunt." He briefly turned to Lindsay. "You're an idiot." Then to Cody, he answered, "And they _are_ on my tail—all the freaking time! They live in my _house_."

"Your parents are cops, yo?" Ezekiel asked. He was surprised but wasn't sure if he should have been. (Was having police for parents typical? Were his parents the exception?)

"That must be so weird for you!" Katie added, and, if anyone had been looking, they would have seen Ezekiel visibly relax. Being weird was the same as being atypical, so his question had been appropriate!

"Is that why you've been arrested so many times?" Bridgette wanted to know.

"Yeah, man. And is it just your parents who are cops, or your brothers too?" Tyler asked, miraculously having kept himself upright for more than five minutes.

"Okay, when did Truth or Dare turn into 'Duncan's Life Story'?" Duncan snapped, getting pissed off at their incessant badgering (and at himself for being a dumbass and wanting to try something 'different' and 'unusual' in the first place.)

Courtney pulled up her knees and leaned over in her chair to give Duncan, still in front of her, a look of mild disgust. "Are they not completely _scandalized_ to have you as their son?"

"Look," Duncan began as he twisted back around to her (_owwww_), answering only because it was Princess who asked. "The way the officials see it—and most of the other cops see it this way too—I'm not so much that guy who puts your life in danger. I'm more that, 'Look out, or he'll steal the lawn-gnome out of your yard!' kind of delinquent," he said, raising the pitch of his voice and flailing a bit for exaggeration. Courtney had to fight the smile tugging at edges of her lips.

After a split second of replaying what he'd just said in his head, though, Duncan narrowed his eyes, turned back to the rest of his former campmates, and hurriedly added, "But don't think I won't seriously damage anyone who crosses me! …I just won't _shoot_ you." He accentuated the last threat with a cracking of his knuckles.

Exasperated, Harold threw his hands up in the air, insisting, "So _what_ did you go to _juvy_ for then?!"

Duncan leaned forward a bit, smirking conspiratorially, and poked the (still wet) geek in the shoulder. "For whatever reason you think I did, times ten."

"Gosh! You are such a psychopath!" Harold began ranting, bringing down his arms. "I'd call you a sociopath, but that would be an insult to all the sociopaths of the world to have you classified in their—"

Before anyone knew what had happened, Harold was in the pool again. This time, however, it was due to Courtney's foot knocking his knees out from under him rather than Duncan's. She had scooted up in her lawn chair for the extra reach as soon as Harold had begun railing on Duncan, because kicking him had seemed like the appropriate reaction—she wasn't admitting anything to herself just yet as to _why_ she defended Duncan, though. After all, she'd called him a psychopath on a few occasions herself…

Upon noticing the stares of her campmates, begging for an explanation (and Duncan's cocky 'I know something you don't know!' expression), she scrambled to defend her actions.

"What?" she spat. "His voice was _annoying_ me." Some of the other teens nodded in agreement as Harold scrambled out of the pool, all by himself this time. It was just as well; Bridgette seemed pretty resolved against having to save anyone else, and Geoff's tongue in her mouth wasn't helping her awareness.

Duncan smirked, leaning back on his arms again, _more_ than barely brushing one of Courtney's legs this time. His touch left tingles on her skin, but Courtney commanded herself not to brush them away, thus alerting Duncan of the effect. "Whatever helps you sleep at night, Buttercup," the boy in question teased. "Your turn, Deej…"

Just as Duncan opened his mouth to ask the signature question of the evening, the lights went out on the pool deck, plunging the teen's unaccustomed eyes into Total Drama Darkness, the only exception being the moonlight and the dimmed lights inside the hotel. People grumbled and groaned, and a voice (that sounded suspiciously like Lindsay's) shrieked briefly.

A loudspeaker a few feet behind Duncan buzzed on, and Chef's Army-hardened voice yelled out, _"Sleepy-time beddy-bye, vermin! Get your worthless carcasses on those mattresses before the bedbugs find something better to do!"_

"Since when do we have a curfew?!" Geoff asked, aghast.

"Yeah! It's _summer_!" Duncan seconded. He had plans for the evening that didn't include going to his room so early. Well, not his _new_ room anyway…

Courtney threw in her two cents as well, yelling at the loudspeaker. "We aren't even on the island anymore!"

Lindsay stretched her arms over her head. "And, I'm not even, like—" _yawn_! "—tired yet!" she added, though the gigantic yawn that broke her sentence in half said otherwise.

"_You are __**going**__ to go to sleep because I am __**telling**__ you to go to sleep!"_ Chef's voice thundered over the speaker's static. "_And_ _if you don't, I will make it so that you will __**never**__ be able to fall asleep __**again**__! Now move, maggots, __**move**__!"_ The loudspeaker clicked off and everyone sat, frozen, seemingly having the same idea as Duncan. Maybe Chef was done. Maybe they could just ignore him and stick around for a few more minutes…

A few seconds later, however, after no one had spoken or flexed a muscle, the speaker clicked back on. _"Did you __**hear**__ me? I said scatter! Are you roaches waiting for me to come down there __**myself**__?!"_

At this fearsome idea, the teens scrambled to their feet and frantically began trying to find their way around in the surrounding darkness among shouts of "Oops, sorry!" and "Katie, WHERE ARE YOU??"

In the process of walking briskly in the direction of the hotel (her CIT training gave her an impeccable sense of direction, after all), Courtney walked right into a solid wall of bare chest.

Already annoyed at Chef's enforced curfew and still pissed at Duncan (or rather, still trying to convince herself that she was), she beat a fist against his shoulder and snapped, "Goddammit, Duncan! Are you going to _drop dead_ if you go for twenty seconds without harassing me?!"

"Um, this is Justin," the person in front of her replied in a slightly embarrassed voice.

Courtney felt herself blushing furiously in the dark and was extremely grateful that Duncan wasn't actually in front of her and that Justin couldn't see her face. "Oh! I'm _so_ sorry, Jus—"

"Besides," Duncan's voice interrupted from just behind her ear, "I can last a full _minute_ if I put my mind to it, but where's the fun in that?"

He squeezed the ticklish spot between Courtney's ribs and hipbone. Startled, she jumped and quickly swung an arm in the direction of where his voice had come from, but it sailed harmlessly through the air.

Duncan snickered, his voice a little further off from where it had been a second ago. Ah, well, he'd _almost_ made it through the whole evening without bugging her. Being unpredictable (when it came to Courtney, anyway) was overrated and took way too much self-control for his taste. "Enjoy your sweet fantasies of me!" he called, heading off to one of the employee entrances he'd discovered during the morning chase.

"In your _dreams_, scumbag!" she shot back, trying to estimate where his voice was coming from so she could (politely) rip out his larynx.

She knew—just _knew_—he was smirking as he said, "You _know_ you are."

Man, Courtney had to admit, she'd really set him up for that one. Further ticked off, she took another swing, making contact that time. It was just with Trent's abdomen instead of Duncan's.

"_Hoof!_" he wheezed, and she could see his silhouette double over.

"_Duncan!"_ Courtney cursed in the darkness before breaking out her most sincere apologies for Trent and helping him into the lobby. Her actual target, however, was already at the secret stairwell and heading upstairs, grinning and humming to himself, wondering if anyone had discovered Camera Crony in the darkroom yet, but not worrying excessively about it. Or at all, really.

Duncan pulled his new key out of his pocket and twirled it around his finger as he hummed and climbed stairs. "_Mmmm_…DAH da da da…I _believe_ that my heart will—" He cut himself short and groaned. "Oh, _great_…"

* * *

Poor Duncan. Life gets more difficult when your worst fear has the ability to get stuck in your head.

And now, some ridiculously long-winded notes from your two co-authors, which are noticeably lopsided this time around:

**From strayphoenix: **So, coming up with creative and in character dares was tricky but SO MUCH FUN. Almost as fun as making Noah, Lindsay, and Eva evil(er), or at least sporting Dark Sides we don't get to see that often.

The chapter title, by the way, is supposed to be taken both literally and sarcastically. In Duncan's case, he should have kept his big mouth shut and taken the dare like a man instead of trying to shock and awe his campmates. For people like Eva and Noah, though, it's sarcastic in the sense of "Gee, tell us how you REALLY feel." They're actually using the TorD guise to get out whatever frustrations they had with the other campers :)

And I WAS going to drop a reference to the Duncan-checking-out-Bridgette scene, but I figured all the guys out there already know what I'm talking about. So I'll leave the pyscho-analysis to the professionals (and **Rina**, if she'd like to throw her two cents in *wink*). Ticked off/Lifesaver Bridgette For The Win!

**From Contemperina: **Oh, Duncan. He may love Courtney, but he _is _still a guy, right? Let's just get this out of the way now—his involuntary reaction (haha, hahaha) wasn't meant to be _any _sort of a crack at his relationship with Courtney. Don't read too far into it. Just chuckle evilly to yourself like I did when I first figured out what **stray** was getting at. (:

And finally, I'll yell, "The calcium-infused whiteness! It burns!!!" Epic win, right there. And since this is the end of my note, do you see how lopsided the two are? If I hadn't pointed it out, ya'll might not have noticed, because they aren't actually _all_ that lopsided now… But they were in my mind. I ended up writing more than I thought I would—that tends to happen to me a lot.

_-=-_

Today, your challenge is to humor **stray** and write us a psycho-analysis on one of the characters!  
Just kidding. In the words of Chris, that's, "Really, _really _hard. So no worries!" (Recognize that, anyone?) Anyway, psycho-analyses _are_ really difficult, so all we ask is that you review. :P

But hey, if you were planning to write a psycho-analysis anyway, don't let us stop you. Please go right ahead. We'll post it in next chapter.

Seriously.

Thanks for reading! Please review. (:


	7. Never burn your bridges

As of the last chapter, we have reached 100 reviews (and more)! This is incredible news, and the two of us owe it all to you readers. Thank you all for staying with us—this is a greater response than we ever expected. Also, a special shout-out goes to **.pekkykid75.** for writing the hundredth review! Yay **.pekkykid75.**!

If you'll recall, when we left Duncan, he'd just made it back to his room for the night, humming the tunes of Celine Dion. And now, we learn his fate…

* * *

**Rule 7: Never burn your bridges**

Duncan slowly peeled his eyes open, expecting to see the dilapidated, wooden ceiling of his cabin. When instead he saw a beating, ceiling-mounted fan on the background of a pristine white ceiling, his conscious found itself somewhere in the middle of intense _déjà_ _vu_ and complete panic. He was about to reach under his pillow for his pocket knife to slash his kidnappers when the realization hit him: he was no longer at Camp Wawanakwa—nor was he in Courtney's room like the night before. That explained the _déjà vu, _though; his room looked _exactly_ the same as hers, give or take a few minor details.

The panic pulsing through his veins was just the normal, run-of-the-mill, "Where the heck am I?" drama versus the Chris-induced "We all may very well_ die_ today!" drama he was used to prepping himself for. He let out a deep sigh, trying to return the beating of his heart to normal speed. Not being back on the island, though awesome, kind of sucked.

Man. Duncan's life was full of contradictions.

He exhaled deeply and rolled over in his bed, kicking a single cover onto the floor, which was one cover too many considering the suffocating heat and the Kentucky Fried state of his back. To his great disappointment, Courtney wasn't lying there beside him like the other morning. No dark-skinned beauty to scare half-to-death, no smooth, shapely body beside his own. Nothing lay there except an extra pillow and the crisp, white hotel bed sheets (though the intern receptionist, when he had demanded sheets in a different color to stir up trouble, informed him they were "_cosmic latte_," not "_white_.") It would seem there was no opportunity for mischievous hijinks just yet.

As his brain started waking up, he began to recall some of the details of a dream he'd had that night. Something told him it had been _awesome_, but he couldn't quite remember all the facts. Flexing his arms above his head (which he failed to do without wincing) and standing up, Duncan attempted to put the random images he'd managed to recall into some sort of feasible scene. As he tugged on his pants and shirts (both of them, this time!), some of it started coming back to him.

He was skating around on a glassy surface, swatting a puck-shaped doodad into a net while Courtney watched from the sides, wide-eyed and admiring. He realized, after a second of analyzing the bizarre image, that the glassy surface was the resort pool, frozen, with billowing plumes of cool steam rising from it in the ridiculous resort heat. Now _that_ was the exact definition of 'refreshing'—and the exact definition of Canada too, if he thought about it.

"Freezing the pool?" he wondered out loud, chuckling to himself. "Man, that is so…" Duncan searched for an adjective to describe the random wonders his imagination had cooked up to remedy the intense heat.

Just as he was putting on his shoes, it hit him: "_Epic!_" All of a sudden, he knew what the first prank of his post-TDI life was going to be: he was going to recreate his dream—or part of it, anyway—by the end of the day. The Courtney element would be more of a challenge. "Either way," he muttered, quickly formulating a plan in his still-foggy brain. "It's going to be sweet."

Approximately fifteen seconds later—just long enough for Duncan to pocket his room key and weapon of choice—he was out the door and moseying down the hallway, watching as the room numbers ticked down. **10B**, **9B**, **8B**… Upon asking how the room assignments were made, Duncan had learned that everyone was placed according to their final status in the competition. Duncan was the tenth guy voted off, so he got room ten. Following the same pattern, Ezekiel got room one, Noah room two, etc. etc. Flipping through his memories of each of the challenges, Duncan quickly concluded that the person he was looking for was in room six. Room 6**B**, specifically. _Not_ **6**_**G**_. (He already knew whose room _that_ was, and though he'd be going after her later, it was not yet the time.) Duncan reached **6B**, almost directly across from the elevator, and rapped on the door three times…

* * *

"Iodine goes into the potassium chloride…and then there's the ammonium carbonate solution…A double replacement reaction here, and boom!" Harold mumbled to himself happily, shut up in his room with a large assortment of chemicals. He enjoyed toiling away with his test tubes in the mornings—no one was up to talk to anyway, so there were never any disruptions to his project.

Well, that would have been if he actually _had_ a definitive project. He was aiming for something to ease the sweltering heat, like an instant air-conditioner or something of a similar nature, since he'd stopped trying to tamper with his damaged thermostat after the third electrocution. But among all his chemical mixings, he was still trying to achieve the 'useful result' part. Previously, he'd created a liquid substance that, when poured onto something and allowed to dry, stuck it to whatever else it was touching. He'd been extremely excited about this discovery, and was about to start working on a title for his patent, when Sadie poked her head in and asked if he had any glue, and he realized that he did, indeed, have glue.

But, he would not be deterred! He would create something astonishing and useful and become the next Harry Coover (the _actual _inventor of superglue). With his newfound fame and riches, he would finally be able to woo Leshawna once more, and then—

_Knock-knock-knock._ A quick rap on the door pulled Harold from his fantasy. "That must be her now!" he proclaimed excitedly. Leshawna had, after all, told him that she would come get him when she was going down to breakfast, but not without the warning of, "I love you baby, but only in a 'you're a pretty cool little white boy' way, so this ain't permission to go gettin' your hopes up now, you hear?" Oh yes, Harold had heard her, but that didn't mean a man shouldn't look his best when greeting his future spouse.

"Why, hello," he began in an unnaturally deep voice as he pulled open the door, "Leshaw—_Duncan?" _Harold gaped at the delinquent in his doorway, surreptitiously glancing down the hallway in hopes of sighting his bodacious beauty.

"'Sup, Nerdling?" Duncan greeted, roughly shoving Harold out of his own doorway and pushing into the room, which was _exactly_ the same as both his _and_ Courtney's. Hotels were so unoriginal. Duncan stepped around Harold's bed to check out his desk, covered with a variety of chemicals, which definitely shouldn't have been available to a teen stranded on an island, even if it _was _a ritzy one.

Harold recovered after a few seconds, having found his balance again, and anxiously watched as Duncan surveyed the complex chemical set up on his wooden desk. From what Harold could tell, the delinquent didn't seem eager to explain his presence—not that he ever justified anything he did at all. So really, it was nothing new.

Duncan _could_ have just come right out and told Harold that he was there on an quest to find the means of making his most recent dream come true, but that would have been too easy, not to mention not very fun. He chose instead to make his enemy sweat, so he took his sweet time invading the nerd's privacy, offering no explanation as to what he was doing there. As a pastime, bothering Harold never failed to entertain.

Harold cleared his throat nervously, prompting Duncan to turn and look at him. "Uh, hi Duncan." Harold peeked out the door once more, looking both ways as if about to cross the street, before shutting it. Something was up, Harold just knew it. Leshawna should have been at his door! She'd be there any minute now! "Why aren't you, like…Leshawna?"

Duncan responded in a fake wheeze. "Why aren't you, like…cool?"

And, because the other boy was Harold and had no understanding of sarcasm, he replied quite seriously, "Well, in all actuality, that would depend on a number of different factors, the most influential being, in humans, the gene controlling—"

Duncan held up a hand, silencing the rambling nerd. "Shut up, Goober," he commanded, a mischievous gleam sparking in his eye—a gleam that would set off the alarm system in any good nerd's mind.

Harold was familiar with the look by that point. He'd gotten it before Duncan pushed him face-first into the mud on Boney Island, multiple times. He'd gotten it one night after Duncan had tipped him out of his bunk and into a particularly nasty pile of Chef's leftovers. He'd woken up to it on many occasions, each instance with a different item lodged in his mouth, which Duncan would then claim muffled his snoring. This, of course, was completely incongruous, because Harold knew for a fact that he didn't snore anyway.

Duncan smiled fondly at the same memories that made Harold cringe while the weaker of the two just stood there looking awkward. Had Duncan ever had his motives for torturing Harold questioned, he would have simply replied, "I'm a mean guy. Deal with it." It was good for his image. For himself, however, he had a different set of reasons.

Duncan liked to believe that his targets always quote-unquote "deserved" whatever was coming to them, whether it was because of their severe snoring issues or because they wouldn't tell the other guys how they'd managed to see Heather's boobs (Duncan still couldn't figure out how the dorkasaurus pulled _that_ off.) Duncan was the delinquent-being, crime-doing, Mohawk-bearing Robin Hood of the 21st century. Though, not _exactly_—he stole far less than he humiliated. Pranking was his specialty, and he enjoyed every minute of it.

Alas, Harold hadn't done anything to Duncan recently—nothing that created any of the aforementioned excuses for pranking him. Oh yes, he'd tried to think of one whilst lying in bed the other night, but everything Duncan thought of that had pissed him off recently wasn't Harold's fault. Courtney getting voted off? Heather. Himself getting voted off? Heather again. Courtney pissed off at him? Heather, at least a little bit.

_Damn. _Heather had been doing more evil than he'd originally realized.

Harold, meanwhile, was racking his (exceedingly capable and incredibly catalogued) brain as well. His genius IQ was superfluous in figuring out that Duncan was planning a prank on him, but he couldn't think of what he'd done to "deserve" it, as Duncan was fond of saying. For the past two weeks, they hadn't even been on the same island! The last bad thing _he _could think of doing—intentionally, anyway—was getting Courtney kicked off the show…

And then it hit him with the inertia of a moving freight train. He. Was. In. _Trouble_. Duncan had never gotten revenge for that one, and though Courtney had already put Harold through his paces—the final result being painful strangulation by street lamp—Duncan's vengeance was sure to be much, _much_ worse.

Duncan scowled at his earlier thoughts of Heather and saw, out of the corner of his eye, Harold's complexion pale by at least three shades. He was practically the color of a _cosmic latte_. "Nerdling!" he called, addressing him.

Harold instantly spazzed out, managing to knock his glasses off his face, stub his toe, and tip over a floor lamp concurrently. "What?" he yelled, frantically dropping down to the floor to search for his lenses.

"Jeez, you're jumpy this morning," Duncan observed, folding his hands together and pacing around Harold's desk.

"Jumpy?" Harold asked hurriedly, feeling around for his glasses. "Pfft, me? I'm not jumpy. It's purely the…uh, Insta-Freeze!" He gestured in what he hoped was the general direction of his desk. He was really indicating a blank space of wall.

Duncan stared at him for a second, eyebrows furrowed, trying to decide what sort of response that last sentence merited. Should he ask what Insta-Freeze was? What it froze? What it was doing in Harold's room? What effects it had on humans or, more suitably, what effects it had on large bodies of water (like resort pools…) in falsely-heated environments?

"Why the hell would you need to freeze something _instantly_?" he asked at last, picking up one of the numerous test tubes on Harold's desk. It smelled like beef jerky and low tide, and its color greatly resembled dead grass.

Even though Harold could only see the faint outline of whatever Duncan had picked up, he knew the situation would improve tenfold if Duncan were _not _holding it. "That aspect of my creation hasn't yet been resolved. And be careful with—!"

_CRASH!_

"—that."

Duncan innocently placed a hand on his heart. "Oops. My _bad_, dude," he said in a tone that gave Harold the hunch that he didn't think it was very bad at all. Duncan stepped aside, exposing the liquefied mess of potassium chlorate and ammonium carbonate pooling where Duncan had just dropped the tube. Rather than freezing the carpet as Harold had hoped, it began eating through the fabric. So _that_ was what Harold had invented: Instant Carpet Destroyer. _Useful_, he thought.

Harold wiped his glasses on the inside of his shirt and replaced them on his nose as Duncan curiously picked up, examined, and returned each of the remaining scientific items on the desk, seemingly disappointed. Harold himself stood helplessly by, watching in the fear that Duncan would chuck a Bunsen Burner at his head or fling a triple beam balance in his direction.

But, Duncan merely made a few popping sounds with his lips and glanced around idly, showing no intention of going anywhere. Harold figured he was probably planning his attack. All the rooms in hotels usually looked the same, but Duncan hadn't been inside any of the other rooms to know that. Much like the Eastern Canadian Wolf, he was surely just surveying his surroundings, waiting for the right moment to strike.

If Harold were to be brave—which he certainly was—he could face Duncan straight on and kick him out of his room. However, if he were also to be stupid, he could do the same and end up with a wedgie the length of the Great Wall of China (over 6,000 kilometers) to go along with whatever Duncan's primary form of retribution would be. Wise choice, that would not be—of that much he was sure.

Growing tired, Duncan stood abruptly and turned to Harold.

"Ahhhh! You can't take me!" the boy declared, flailing around before settling into some goofy kung-fu position. (The 'Crouching Chicken,' to be specific.) "I _will_ fight you!"

Duncan didn't flinch, but his face twisted up into one of confusion and slight concern for Harold's mental stability. "Yeah, thanks for the memo, geek-face." He took a step back and looked at Harold, folding his arms. "Did one of those little wires in your brain get clipped overnight or something? I _do _appreciate how freaked out you are—I mean, this is _me _we're talking about here." He gestured to himself smugly. "But, I'm not here to kill you. _This_ time." Duncan cracked his knuckles to make it clear that even though he didn't have the intention of homicide on that particular day, it could certainly be saved for the next.

Harold didn't move from his animalistic pose. "Oh, I'm not falling for that one, my opponent. Bring. It. On." He motioned to Duncan once with his right hand. "You cannot take me without a fight!"

_Okay, _Duncan thought, watching Harold cautiously. Was this some sort of joke? He was on a reality TV show, after all. "Dude," Duncan said, shrugging his shoulders. "What are you _talking _about? I'm not _taking_ you at all! You need to chill."

Harold cocked his head to the side while Duncan shot him a look that said, "I don't know what the heck is up with you right now, and I don't want to find out, but you need to drop this act or else I'm going to _give _you something to be scared of."

Harold's eyes narrowed to slits behind his glasses. "Prove it," he demanded in a deep voice, most likely intended to be intimidating and nonnegotiable.

Duncan squinted at the nerd, sighed, and sat in Harold's desk chair, grabbing two test-tubes at random and aimlessly mixing the chemicals inside. They made a sizzling noise on contact, causing Duncan's scowl to morph into a satisfied grin. "Fine then. I will," he said. "Look at yourself."

Harold looked down at his pajama clad torso and then to his equally flimsy lower half, noticing that nothing looked out of the ordinary. He looked back to the delinquent sitting in his chair.

"Everything's still there, right?" Duncan prompted, already knowing the answer. "You're in one piece?"

"Affirmative…" Harold nodded once.

"Well, that's proof enough, isn't it?" Duncan held up his hands in a gesture of innocence, though the effect was somewhat diffused by that fact that he held two test-tubes filled of highly reactive substances. "If I was going to cripple you today, I would have done it already," he announced, as if it were a reassuring thing.

Harold stammered for a moment as he dropped out of stance, trying to phrase the mania in his head into actual words, and then he spluttered, "Then _what are you doing_ in my room?"

_Aww. _Harold had apparently grown tired of Duncan's game, but it was just as well. The delinquent needed to get down to business. He smirked and looked around cautiously, as if the fact that he was in Harold's room had just occurred to him, and he had to check the space for privacy. Placing the test tubes back in their respective holders, he turned to the lanky boy in front of him and leaned in secretively. "Harold," Duncan began. "I've got a _proposition_ for you. And if you don't want to lose one of your limbs later on today, I'd suggest you think about this _very_ carefully."

"Well, it doesn't sound like I have much of a choi—"

"Yeah, yeah," Duncan interrupted, waving him off. "You don't, so here's the deal: I'm freezing the outdoor pool today."

Harold widened his eyes. Freezing a body of water of _that_ volume? That was _chlorinated_? In _that_ environment? _Outdoors? _Had Duncan taken a science class, like, _ever_? "Are you mad? You don't have any idea what you're trying to do!"

Duncan shrugged him off. "Nope. But _you_ do," he countered, eyeing the array of chemicals on the nerd's desk. "Flash-freezing water can't be that hard, right? All you have to do is pour a couple chemicals in and then…boom!" He mimed an explosion with his hands.

"Duncan," Harold began condescendingly, launching into a lengthy and detailed explanation of the process behind flash-freezing according to Dr. Clarence Birdseye, who invented the concept in the early 20th century. "What you're asking me to do is much more difficult than you would imagine. Vitrifying that amount of water would require at _least _a ton of liquid nitrogen, as well as a substantial amount of ethanol and dry ice!"

Duncan stared at him. "So? Can't you just harvest all that stuff from the air or something?"

Harold looked at him like he was crazy. Maybe he was. "You can't just _pull _ethanol out of the air! That's simply not how the world wor—"

"Look, Harold," Duncan interrupted once again. "I don't really care how you do it. All I know is that you _are _going to flash-freeze that pool—" he gestured in the direction of the window, "—and it _is _going to happen by this afternoon. Otherwise, you are going to be one very lopsided dork. Capiche?"

Harold gulped and nodded. At least Duncan's new 'flash-freeze' fixation was postponing his vengeance for Courtney's elimination. "I guess I _could _test out my Insta-Freeze…"

"Atta boy, Dr. Nerdenstein," Duncan praised, slapping him on the back. Then, for the first time in his life, he held out his fist to Harold. After a brief moment of confusion (wasn't his face supposed to go there?), the amateur scientist lightly bumped it with his own.

"Hey, Duncan?" he called after the exiting delinquent. "If you don't mind me asking, why_ are_ we flash-freezing the pool?"

Duncan chuckled, pulling Harold's door open and stepping out into the hallway.

"We're playing ice hockey, man."

The door slammed shut before Harold could ask any more questions.

* * *

Confused? So is Harold.

And now, some ridiculously long-winded notes from your two co-authors, which serve as a feeble apology:

**From strayphoenix: **Dear reviewers, we have finally reached the 100 review mark!

And we repay your awesomeness by posting late :P. Totally my fault, I'm afraid. With all the intensive awesome writing we've been doing the past months, all the loafing I needed to get done kind of backed up on me. Please don't TP my place of residence. I would greatly appreciate it since I'm still finding toilet paper in my trees from angry reviewers of other stories ;)

So, in this chappie, our tale takes a different direction with the start of Day 2 of Playa Des Losers. The ice hockey thing was my idea for a few reasons, not the least being that it was something I'd never seen done before. They're in CANADA for crying out loud! Our contestants would sooner run into an ice rink than a palm tree up there if Chris wasn't so thorough (and diabolical). Second reason? The potential for great _Duncan vs. Courtney_ in competitive, (almost) organized sports was WAY too good to pass up. And we needed to introduce the Harold element to the equation sooner rather than later.

**Rina** forever wins my awesomeness medal for this next set of chapters. I was panicking when I sent her my idea thinking, "Holy crud! How is she going to string together all the random plot points I requested? I might as well have told her to bake a cake out of wood chippings and live bumblebees!" But she pulled it off splendidly! Better than even I had imagined it. Kudos all the way :)

What mischief does our favorite delinquent's Mohawk have in store for us?

Stay with us, folks. Your patience and dedication will pay off!

**From Contemperina: **I know this has been said two times over already, but I feel the need to reiterate: 100 REVIEWS? WHAT? This is a huge milestone in my fanfiction life, seeing as this is my first story (well, _half_ my story) to reach 100. I would say that it knocked off my socks, but I'm not a huge fan of socks in the first place, so they were never really on… But the gist of the expression remains.

So yeah, this was a late post compared to the rest. But, did the Duncan/Harold interaction sort of make up for it? I sure hope so, because it was my idea, and I'm quite fond of that relationship in the show. Don't get me wrong, though—I have my fair share of problems with Harold, namely the he-got-Courtney-voted-off-in-TDI problem. But once you get past that, he's a pretty cool kid. _Gosh!_

Now, based on the end of this chapter, you were likely left saying, "Ice hockey? What? I don't understand!" That is okay. Bear with us, and all will become clear. And awesome. It will all become _extremely_ awesome, and it will not resemble a cake made of wood-chippings and live bumblebees in the slightest. (: I really love that analogy, don't you? I plan to start using it in everyday life.

Until next time! And next time will NOT have as much distance from this time as this time had from last time. If that makes any sense at all.

* * *

And now, we present two psycho-analyses from the last chapter! (We know. We weren't really expecting any either. It was a wonderful surprise.)

From **CarmillaD**, regarding Eva's violent tendencies.

"I think her tough behavior could be for the following reasons:

1) She's the only child and her dad always wanted to have a boy, so she tries to get stronger to make him happy, to have his recognition.

2) She isn't the only child but the only girl instead, so she was raised with only brothers. She could even be the youngest, and she wants to be as strong or even stronger than them to be considered an equal.

3) Men in Eva's life have been total jerks (her dad, brothers, a guy who broke her heart), so he builds walls and keeps a defensive attitude to avoid a betrayal or pain again."

Wonderful! And now, from **smartnsporty**, regarding Justin and why he's just so darn gorgeous.

"I'd do one on Justin for reasons like these:

1: He was ugly as a child and kids teased him, so now his flaunts off his looks.

2: He was abused as a child and now he has to make everyone feel ugly.

3: He was abandoned as a child and feels hated so he makes people feel ugly to boost his confidence."

Quite possible, quite possible.

This concludes the longest post-chapter note ever. Anyone who actually read to the bottom of this deserves a cookie, or five. No kidding.  
Thanks for all the reviews, everyone! It's incredible.

Thanks for reading! Please review. (:


	8. Never box yourself into a plan

Guess what, gang? _The Art of Pretending_ has been recommended for [http://thereadershavechosen. eternflame. com]'s Monthly Recommendation List! For those of you unfamiliar with this site, it's—and this is quoted—"a community dedicated to finding the best of the best in fandoms across the boards and sharing them with other authors and avid readers." So, being recommended for one of their lists is a huge honor for the two of us! Thanks to all of you for making our fic so dang popular. :) (More on this later…)

If you'll recall, when we left Duncan, he'd just made a temporary alliance with Harold in order to freeze the resort pool. And now, we learn his fate…

* * *

**Rule 8: Never box yourself into a plan**

"This is completely ridiculous."

Bridgette sighed, nudging Courtney with her elbow. "I don't know," she said mildly, eyeing the crowd gathering around the pool from where the two girls stood outside the resort lobby. "I think it's pretty cool. It'll be fun!"

Courtney ignored her, too deep into her ranting. "How does one go about freezing a pool anyway? That's practically impossible unless you have about a ton of liquid nitrogen, not to mention dry ice and ethanol, and I _know _we don't have any of that here." She swatted at a palm tree whose leaves dared get in her way as Bridgette shot her a curious look. "I took AP Chemistry last year! I should know!" Courtney defended her obscene knowledge on the subject.

"I heard that Harold used one of his inventions," Bridgette said to change the subject, coaxing Courtney in the direction of the pool deck. "Insta-Freeze, I think he called it. A few drops in the pool filter and then…" She gestured to the smooth, clear surface and raised her eyebrows.

Courtney pursed her lips, a bit miffed that there had actually been an answer to her question. She'd hoped it would have been rhetorical. "Well, _why_? _What_ is the purpose of freezing a perfectly functional pool?"

Bridgette shrugged. "Ice hockey?"

Courtney huffed. Couldn't Bridgette humor her, just that once? "Ice hockey! I'd much rather go swimming."

"But you just told me yesterday that you don't really like swimming."

"…Well, I _really _don't like ice hockey!"

Bridgette smiled knowingly, dragging her friend by the elbow over to where the rest of the contestants were gathered around the newly-formed ice rink. "Oh, come on, Court," she whispered, a laugh in her voice. "You're just mad because Duncan's the one who thought of it. If I'd come up with the idea, I don't think we'd have a problem here."

_What betrayal!_ Courtney whipped her head from side to side to make sure no one had overheard. "I absolutely would n—!"

_SCREEEEEEEEEEECH!_

Duncan cleared his throat, just in case the sound of his pilfered megaphone hadn't already gotten everyone's attention. He was pleased to see that, surprisingly, _everyone_ waspresent—even Noah, by some stretch of the imagination. Mr. Sarcasm had a book on him, but still. It was the thought that counted.

Eighteen heads turned in the direction of the machine's awful noise, and Duncan gladly took command from there. "Listen up!" he called, stepping up onto a lounge chair to better address the crowd. "As I hope you guys all figured out, we're playing ice hockey!"

Among the chorus of whoops and shouts that responded immediately, Lindsay could be heard asking Beth, "How were we supposed to figure out we were playing ice hockey?" Beth shushed her.

Courtney tapped her foot impatiently as she waited for her peers to settle. Why were they getting so worked up? Yeah, yeah, ice hockey was the number one winter sport in Canada, but it was the middle of the summer! People shouldn't have been able to even _play_ ice hockey, but of course Duncan had to go orchestrate the impossible.

"I know, I know," Duncan said to those standing below him, lowering the megaphone from his mouth and grinning smugly. After a few more moments of excited chatter, he captured the group's attention once more. "First order of business: We need teams."

Geoff was quick to shout, "Boys versus girls!"

Bridgette, however, upon noticing the looks exchanged among the campers, and especially between the couples, quickly abandoned Courtney to prod Geoff in the ribs. "Don't you want to be on the same team?" she whispered into his ear, widening her eyes at him.

Geoff screwed up his face, considering the implications of a Girls vs. Boys game and the possible effects it could have on the make-out session that would follow. "Oh, dude." He scratched his head. "You know what, Dunc? I take it back." Geoff received a satisfied look from Bridgette, so he pulled her to his side and gave her a squeeze. "Let's do Bass versus Gophers! Like old times!"

Old times. _Psh_. For Duncan, those old times were last week.

At any rate, he rolled his eyes at his _completely whipped_ friend. God forbid Duncan ever turn out like that. He switched back on the megaphone, starting to understand why Chris loved it so much, and shouted, "All right! Who's up for Bass versus Gophers?"

The campers responded with a resounding "Yeah!", fists pumping in the air.

"Then it's settled! Bass versus Gophers playing in the first ever League of Losers ice hockey game!" he announced. Duncan had thought up that one himself—League of Losers—and was pretty proud of it. He was so clever, it was almost unfair.

After the expected shouts of agreement had faded away, Duncan continued, beginning to pace on his lounge chair. "Second order of business: Gear. If you'll direct your attention to over there—" Duncan pointed to the snack shack. "—you'll see that, thanks to the combined efforts of myself and Harold, everything you need is right behind those counters." Duncan jumped off the chair and jogged over to the pile behind the snack shack's ledge, the crowd trailing behind. "Sticks." He held up a multitude of broomsticks and other long, pole-like objects, each with a hairbrush attached to the end by rubber bands. "A puck, thanks to Lindsay." He held up a small and shiny, puck-sized make-up compact. "Ice skating stuff." Duncan tossed two boxes of tin foil at the mass of teens, which were met with confused looks. "You cover your shoes with the foil."

"To reduce friction!" Harold piped up, poking his head up from where he'd apparently been rummaging around under the counter.

For once, to Courtney's great surprise and slight annoyance, Duncan _didn't_ look like he wanted to hack the boy's head off. "Yeah, that. Friction." Harold whispered something to Duncan, causing him to roll his eyes. "Oh, _yeah," _he picked up again. "For any and all the pussies we have out there—" He shot a meaningful look in DJ's direction while grabbing an armful of pillows from Harold, "—we've got a bunch of pillows you can strap to yourself for padding. Because, let me tell you now, when I say ice hockey, I mean _ice hockey_, body checking and all."

"Yeah! That's so _sweet_!" Tyler jumped in the air, but landed on the slippery edge of the rink and crashed to the ground.

"Don't hurt yourself there, bucko," Duncan said offhandedly, not bothering to check if Tyler was all right because he was, as Tyler put it, "Okay!" Then, kicking open the employee entrance to the shack, Duncan called to the crowd, "First come, first serve!"

The campers instantly swarmed the little shack, Courtney at their head. Yes, she thought the idea was stupid, and yes, ice hockey was not meant for the summer, but goddammit! If they were going to play, and it looked like they were, she was going to get the very best equipment available, even if it meant sifting through each and every make-shift stick and cushion out there. As Courtney compared a broom to what looked like half a flagpole, she heard some of the other girls chattering.

"Oh, it was no biggie," Lindsay said in reply to one thing or another, tossing the idea aside with the flick of her wrist. "I don't even like that kind."

Leshawna sent a disapproving gaze in Lindsay's direction. "Now girl, that's what I call wasteful. That compact is full of perfectly good make-up, and you're just throwing it away! You know it's gonna be full o' cracks by the time we're done here."

"No, no," Lindsay said, giggling. "The make-up's no good anyway. See, I asked for foundation number 96, but the company must of read it upside-down or something, because the color is like, a whole _shade_ off my skin tone!" She looked horrified.

Courtney furrowed her eyebrows, latching onto the only detail she'd managed to pull out of the blonde's meaningless string of words. "96 upside-down is still 96, Lindsay," she corrected, looking over her shoulder at the group of girls clustered somewhere off behind her. Turning back around, she held up two pillows, debating whether to go with the regular, bed kind or a throw pillow from the lobby.

"Oh." Lindsay considered this for a moment. "Well, I don't know what they did then. But it's all wrong, so I figured I'd put the foundation to good use! I mean, it's not like I could give it away. Beth doesn't wear make-up, and Leshawna's too black!"

"I'm too _black?" _Leshawna raised her eyebrows in surprise, trying to decide whether to take offense to that last comment or merely file it away as another thing Lindsay had said innocently, without understanding the social implications.

"Fair enough," Courtney muttered, exiting the shack before things had the chance to get ugly. She dragged her findings—the regular pillow and the broomstick—over to the edge of the pool, where the rest of the Bass were already camped out, and scooted in between DJ and Bridgette.

"Are you sure you have enough pillows, Deej?" Duncan was goading from where he laid on the other side of the massive guy, icing his sunburned back on the surface of the frozen pool. Courtney did have to admit, DJ had an_ excessive _amount of pillows, even for ice hockey. At least eight big ones were piled in front of him, as well as a decorative cushion fastened to the top of his head. "I wouldn't want you to break a nail out there."

DJ harrumphed, busy coating his sandals with a solid layer of tin foil. "We'll see who's laughing when you fall on the ice and dislocate your thumb or something! There aren't any medics here. We don't even have a referee! Who's gonna handle the injuries?"

Courtney inadvertently dropped the tin foil from her hands and turned to DJ. "Wait. We don't have a referee?"

DJ shrugged. "That's what Duncan said. I mean, you can ask him if you want…" He trailed off, unsure of whether or not the mention of his bare-chested friend would come to cause him physical pain.

Fortunately for DJ, Courtney was already getting on her knees in order to lean across his considerable mound of pillows. "Duncan," she called. "Duncan!"

A smirk formed on the delinquent's lips as he heard his name, and he quickly rolled over to face Ezekiel next to him (revealing his naked, reddened back in the process) and struck up a conversation about how Girls vs. Boys would have been an _awful_ idea because the girls _obviously _would have lost because guys were _clearly_ superior. Duncan realized mid-way through his spiel that such things probably weren't the best to say to a boy who already had issues with sexism, but Duncan decided it was too late; the damage was done.

"DUNCAN!" When he still didn't turn, Courtney grabbed several fistfuls of foil and chucked them at his sunburn. "I—" Foil. "Have—" Foil. "Something—" The biggest piece of foil yet. "To ask you!"

Duncan hissed at the pain while Courtney couldn't see his face, but when he rotated to face her, he looked nothing more than mildly bothered. "Princess! Rude much?" Ezekiel followed Duncan's lead and turned as well. "I was just in the middle of a very interesting conversation with Zeke, here."

"It's true, eh!" the other boy added, nodding enthusiastically.

Courtney leaned over DJ's mountain of pillows, rolling her eyes for what seemed like the hundredth time since Duncan's arrival. "DJ says we don't have a referee," she seethed.

Duncan raised his eyebrows, sitting up on his knees to match Courtney's position. "Last time I checked, questions ended like this?" He raised the pitch of his voice towards the end of the sentence in a Lindsay-like manner.

Courtney sneered at him. "Who said I was asking you a question?" Oh, wait. She had. Darn.

"That's better!" Duncan rooted, applauding sarcastically. "A little more practice and you'll be asking questions like a pro."

"I—you—!" Duncan making fun of her ability to form inquiries—an ability which was perfectly fine, anyhow—was not the direction the conversation was supposed to be headed in.

"Why isn't there a referee?" Courtney spat out, placing her hands on top of Pillow Mountain and squashing it down until she could see the entirety of Duncan's torso. His beautiful…ripped torso… Courtney found it very difficult not to focus on it, seeing as he'd yet to put the cursed shirt back on.

"Because we don't need one." Duncan spun around on his butt, landing with his head on the pillows between Courtney's hands. He looked up at her, his piercing blue eyes meeting her own.

Courtney, captured in his gaze, only just managed to rip her own away. Unluckily for her, however, her eyes landed on his sculpted torso instead, so she had to put another bout of willpower towards removing her gaze from that as well. She self-consciously folded her arms and focused on the space between Duncan's eyebrows.

"What do you mean, we don't need a referee?" she resumed. "What if…DJ gets checked and dislocates his thumb?" DJ shrunk back a bit from the pair and cradled his right thumb tenderly. "You said it, not me," Courtney snapped at him, aggravated by his cowardice.

Duncan sat up in the space that DJ had just vacated, unceremoniously kicking Pillow Mountain out of his way. He eyed Courtney rather seriously, given the circumstances, and repeated, "We don't need a referee."

"We _do_." God, _why_ couldn't he just put a shirt on??

"Well, who's it gonna be?" Duncan asked sharply. "You want me to go get Chef? You looking for a repeat of the dodgeball game?"

Courtney tilted her head to the side, no doubt thinking back to the second challenge. A few seconds later, she tossed her provisional gear aside and announced, "I'll do it. I'll be the referee!" She stood up, resolving to create some sort of penalty box before the game began.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa," Duncan exclaimed, grabbing her by the elbow. "I don't think so! What makes you think you can be the ref? You're not qualified." Surely _that_ would get her, he figured. Qualified. He himself had no regard whatsoever for qualifications and junk, but that whole mess was Courtney's entire world. Not even she would go so far as to do something she wasn't specifically _qualified _to—

"As a matter of fact, I _am_ qualified," Courtney retorted, a hint of pride in her voice. "My parents have connections in the business world," she said, a steady stream of authority in her vocals. Of course, this was a tone she reserved specifically for Duncan, because she hated him and he deserved it—or so she tried to convince herself. "_So_, we get box seats to all the Maple Leaf games. I haven't missed one since I was twelve," she added, just to top it off.

Duncan's jaw went slack as he tried to process this new information. _No. No way. _Courtney watched hockey? And she liked it? "Name their goaltenders," he demanded.

Courtney smiled faintly and began ticking off the players on her fingers. "Gustavsson and Giguere, from Sweden and Quebec, respectively."

Duncan would have stabbed her with his dog collar if it weren't for the fact that she had yet to realize her undying love for him, and she wouldn't ever be able to do so if she was reduced to a simple obituary.

"I can't believe you get box seats to every, single, effing Maple Leafs game!" he shouted. As soon as the words were out of his mouth, however, he wished he could have stuffed them back inside. Or shoved them down a wood chipper. Or hacked them apart with a chainsaw. Or at _least_ turned down their volume.

"Did I just hear what I thought I heard?" Geoff shouted from across the Bass circle, effectively gaining the attention of every other camper in the near vicinity. "Courtney gets _box seats_ to all the Maple Leaf games?"

Courtney yanked her elbow out of Duncan's slackened grasp as Geoff hopped up and scampered over to where she stood. "Yes, it's true," she said, seamlessly sliding on her _I'm a modest person _face. "Every game. I haven't missed one since I was twelve." Duncan figured that little fact had to be one of her crowning achievements in life, seeing as she'd already mentioned it twice in the last thirty seconds.

Courtney, after Geoff's announcement, was instantly besieged by every male contestant on the show—excluding Noah but including Eva. Everywhere she turned, there was a face demanding to know who was her favorite player? What did she think of that last article in _Sports Illustrated?_ How much better were box seats than the regular ones? Courtney easily accepted their attention.

"Dude," Geoff said to Duncan, breaking out of the crowd and approaching the delinquent, who was fully engaging himself in pulling his shirt over his head. His back didn't even hurt, numb from the ice as it was. "If it doesn't work out between you two," Geoff started, squatting down to Duncan's level and gesturing to Courtney with a jerk of his head, "can _I _marry her?"

"Yeah, feel free, man," he grumbled, not making eye contact. "If you value your _life_ and your _genitals_, however," he spoke up frostily, punctuating every other word with a violent tear of his tin foil, "I would advise against it strongly." Duncan glanced up at Geoff to make sure it was clear—Courtney was his and only his, or at least she would be. Eventually. He was working on it, and as long as that was true, no one else was allowed to try.

Geoff made a face at Duncan, somewhere between "I'm going to pretend to be afraid of you for your ego's sake," and "I'm genuinely afraid of you, so please don't end my life."

"What happened to Bridgette anyway, Lover Boy?" Duncan asked, tilting his head at the female blonde, who was mingling somewhere behind Geoff. "Aren't you two supposed to be in loooooooove?_" _

"Well, sure, man," Geoff replied, unashamed. "I love Bridge, but Courtney gets _box seats. _To every game!I think it might be worth the sacrifice!" Unfortunately for Geoff, Bridgette had chosen that very moment to walk up to him from behind, and she'd heard every word.

"I can't believe you!" she gasped, circling the pair and wedging herself in between Geoff and Duncan. "Do I really mean so little to you that I can be bought out by a couple hockey tickets? I hope you have fun making out with those, because you sure aren't getting anything more from me!"

And then Bridgette, who fought only with words, stalked away without so much as a knee to the balls. Courtney disapproved entirely; nothing got an idea across to a guy like a knee to the balls, unless the guy in question was Duncan. No matter how many times she repeated the action, it never seemed to faze him for long.

Geoff, meanwhile, was sent reeling backwards by the hurt on his girlfriend's features. He flailed around in an attempt to find an excuse for his words. "Naw, Bridgette, no! You know that's not what I meant, babe! I was talking about—um, uh…" He took off, following after her.

Regrettably, this meant that Duncan's only distraction had departed, forcing him to turn his attention back to Princess, who was _completely _raining on his ice hockey parade. When Duncan turned around to check out the crowd around Miss "I haven't missed a game since I was twelve," he saw that it was still there, thick as ever.

"I know," Courtney was saying to her male enthusiasts, graciously accepting their admiration. "I love ice hockey." And then, shooting a cunning glance in Duncan's direction, "I would _really _love to be the referee for our game today, but Duncan says we don't need one…" She sighed dramatically and pouted for the group.

Trent busted out of the throng without delay and approached their leader. "Duncan, man. Are you for real?" he asked, still in awe over Courtney's ownership of the amazing box seats. "Why can't she ref?"

"Yeah, bro," Cody chimed in, breaking away as well. "Give the lady what she wants!"

Ezekiel stepped up to offer the profound words, "I agree!" and was happily surprised when the rest of the males chimed in, agreeing with his agreement. A few seconds later, the cheers morphed into a chant of, "Let her ref! Let her ref!" which was steadily growing in volume.

Courtney snickered, quite pleased with the outcome. "So, Duncan," she started, walking to his side and flashing him a sugary smile. "What's it going to be?"

"Let her ref! _Let her ref! _LET HER REF! _LET HER REF!"_

"Fine. Fine!" Duncan snapped at the crowd. The chanting didn't cease, though, so he pulled out the megaphone and turned it on high blast. "I said, _FINE_! She can ref, okay? Are you freaks happy?" Duncan sent a fierce look in the crowd's direction, but it was wasted; all the guys had placed their attention on Courtney.

She grinned and climbed onto the lifeguard stand for a bird's-eye view of the game as the chanting morphed back into scattered cheers.

Duncan snorted unattractively, but it didn't matter because no one was paying attention to him anyway; they were all too busy either admiring Courtney in all her prestige or arguing over who would play what position. _Fine, _Duncan thought. Courtney could have her fun. He had a plan to dethrone her later, which he would put into action as soon as the game started.

For the moment, however, he wandered over to the snack shack. Ducking under the counter, he pulled out what had become one of his most prized possessions: an _actual_ hockey stick. He'd carved it for himself while waiting for Harold to gather up his ethanol and nitrogen and whatever else he'd needed to dump into the pool to produce the wonderful frozen effect.

"Hey, Harold!" he called, motioning the boy over with one hand and checking out his handy-work, held in the other. He was pleased to find that the wood was smooth and sturdy, perfect for the upcoming game. "This is for you." Duncan leaned under the counter once more and produced a second and third hockey stick, handing one to Harold. "A 'thank you' for helping me out with _this_." He tossed an arm in the general direction of the Insta-Frozen H2O.

Harold smiled and accepted the stick hesitantly, obviously fearing that it would spontaneously explode, or squirt poison into his eyes.

"Take it, man," Duncan said, prodding Harold with his foot. "It's legit. Well, _mostly,_" he amended, snickering to himself.

Harold chuckled weakly in reply. It sounded like he had a bad case of hiccups. "Where did you, uh, get the wood?" he wheezed, glancing over the stick's handiwork with respect.

"If you think about it _really_ carefully, you're going to realize you don't want that questioned answered."

At the loss of color in Harold's face, Duncan laughed. "Don't worry, man," he clapped Harold on the back. "Let's just say I give you permission to speak at my funeral, if you want."

Harold didn't reply, opting instead to stare at Duncan with an awkward squint. "You know, this doesn't mean I _like_ you now or anything," Duncan clarified. Harold nodded and continued staring, which made Duncan uncomfortable. Deciding that he'd let it go on for long enough, Duncan pointed in the direction of the remaining players and announced, "You can leave now."

Harold didn't seem to have heard him and instead spat out what he'd presumably been working on for the past minute. "Thanks, Duncan," he said softly. The sentiment was short but sincere, and the two boys exchanged a look that someone, if he or she did not know better, would think contained the beginnings of a truce. "What's the other stick for?" Harold asked after an instant, gesturing to the extra creation in Duncan's hands.

Duncan made a face, casting a quick glance in the direction of Courtney and her entourage. "Actually—"

"It's for Courtney, isn't it?" Harold interrupted, accurately interpreting the glance.

"Yeah, but—"

"You're in quite a predicament, I see," he said, nodding to Courtney, who was giving some sort of group talk to the remainder of the campers.

"I know, so—"

Harold pressed on. "Personally, I think you should just—"

"_Nerdling_!" Duncan yelled, grabbing Harold by the shoulders and giving him a quick shake. "Stop interrupting me!"

"Sorry." Harold apologized and shrunk back a bit, Duncan's manhandling reminding him of the delinquent's lethal capabilities.

Duncan shook his head in exaggerated annoyance. "I don't know what I'm going to do with this thing," he said, banging to stick on the ground and producing a lovely, _bonk!-_ing noise. "I might burn it. But for now, I'll just play it by ear."

Harold nodded, heading en route for the ice rink. "That's exactly what I was going to suggest."

Duncan shrugged and followed nonchalantly. "Good to know we're on the same page." He ran to get in front of Harold and climbed onto Courtney's lifeguard stand without hesitation, megaphone in hand.

"Um, excuse me!" Courtney reproached after being rudely shoved out of Duncan's way.

"Yeah, yeah," he said, brushing her off in order to take back the control that was rightfully his. "Do we have our teams?" he called down to the players.

"YEAH!"

"Do we have our gear?"

"YEAH!"

"Then _let's play some ice hockey_!"

"_YEAH!" _

Thank God for megaphones.

* * *

Man, shut down right before the action starts! Disappointment…

And now, some ridiculously long-winded notes from your two co-authors, which are covering many ideas in limited words:

**From strayphoenix: **Pretty good for a pair of writers who have never watched a live hockey game in their lives, huh? Oh, Wikipedia, how much we do love thee? I struck up random conversations with strangers who played ice hockey just to make sure we got all the terminology right, though. It was less tedious than combing through the wiki page but a tad bit more awkward. Whatever, they were cute :). Granted, neither **Rina** nor I have ever TRIED playing ice hockey this way (or at _all_) but we're 96.4 percent certain that it would work. That's just by Harold's statistics.

And wtf? Courtney watches hockey?! And LIKES it?! Because Duncan wasn't already over the moon crazy about her, now she has box seats, making her the object of adoration of every male in Canada (poor Geoff lol).

Referee Courtney was a fun twist too, that I hope none of you saw coming. _Duncan vs. Courtney_ ice hockey? Okay, sure, should be interesting. _Duncan vs. OTHER PEOPLE _with Courtney making and dishing out RULES? Holy crap! How does—?! What the—?! Why would—?! YES.

Oh, and Duncan's sunburn is still causing him pain. And shirtlessness. **Rina** and I are not kind and loving gods. Unless you posses two X chromosomes, in which case, we actually ARE. :) Stay tuned for more frozen fun!

**From Contemperina: **Okay! Today's first order of business: Yeah, ice hockey! Cool! (Literally. Haha, _pun_. Write a pun for me, and I'll love you forever.) Like **stray** mentioned, we did our research, BUT, if you yourself are an ice hockey aficionado, feel free to make us aware of our grave mistakes. Who knows? A vast knowledge of winter sports might come in handy when I'm on a trivia game show later in life. (: Oh, it'll happen, people. You best believe it.

Second order of business: Our recommendation for the forum! **stray** JUST (as in less than an hour ago, which is _really _difficult to coordinate in the fanfiction world) found out about this and is, like myself, over the moon!  
_Waaaaaaaaaaaaaay_ up there, I mentioned that there was more on that coming, and here it is: if you want _The Art of Pretending_ to graduate from recommendation to nominee (which, if **stray** and I are doing our jobs right, you're in favor of by now), we need you to vote! You can go to [http:// thereadershavechosen. eternflame. com/ forum/ index. php? topic= 1598.0] {minus those spaces right there} to view a list of what have been deemed some top DxC stories and pick your fav! (Again, if **stray** and I are doing our jobs right, TAOP is your favorite… Or so I would hope.) An account is required for voters, but it's not hard. And hey, it's for the greater good.

Third order of business: Psychoanalyses! (FYI, this is a really annoying and difficult word to type. Type it correctly, full-speed, on the first try. _I dare you_.) **stray** and I are now considering—notice, _considering_—making a side project out of them later down the road, and we'd love to receive more! Preferably analyzing characters no one else has touched on yet. (And, regretfully, we'll ask you to stay away from DxC. We call dibs on those two.) :P I know it involves some extra time and effort, but hey, if anyone's up for it, it's you! …And you. And that guy over there.

'Kaythanksbye. :)

_-=-_

And now, presenting another psychoanalysis, this time from **fulltimereviewer **on Izzy and her multiple personalities**:**

"Here's Izzy!

1. Her parents gave her very little attention, so she created alter-egos to keep her company.

2. Because she got no attention, she does all the crazy things to get attention.

3. Deep down inside, she wants someone to see the real "Isabella"."

Sounds good from here!

_-=-_

Keep 'em coming, everyone! It's. Freaking. Awesome. And we know, we're asking a lot of you this chapter, what with the voting and the psychoanalyses.  
…Sorry.

Thanks for reading! Please review. (:


	9. Never fight the higher authority

Fun fact of the chapter: thanks to your combined greatness, TAOP is in the lead in the fanfiction poll we mentioned last chapter! Only by one vote, however, so if you haven't taken part yet, we'd jump for joy if you skedaddled over to [http:// thereadershavechosen. eternflame. com/ forum/ index. php? topic= 1598.0] and did some clicking. Actually, we're jumping for joy anyway (we've nearly cracked 150 reviews! Is that insane or what?). But, you would be making us jump…higher.

If you'll recall, when we left Duncan, he'd just orchestrated a Playa-wide game of ice hockey, for which Courtney plans to act as the referee. And now, we learn his fate…

**

* * *

**

**Rule 9: Never fight the higher authority**

Though it had taken quite a bit of arguing and more than one almost-physical fight, the campers had taken their places on the surface of the pool. For the Bass, Duncan, Eva, and Geoff named themselves forwards, and Harold the goalkeeper (because of his "wicked awesome puck-subduing skills"), leaving the rest of the team to either play as defensemen or wait for the need of a substitution. For the Gophers, Leshawna, Tyler, and Izzy were prepared to act as forwards, and Trent the goalkeeper because, "All the goalie does is stand in the goal. That means I won't really have to play…right?"

Courtney cleared her throat and skated to the center of the rink, Lindsay's compact in her hands. After assuring that Duncan and Leshawna, who would be participating in the face-off, were the proper distance apart, she shouted, "Let the match… begin!" and dropped the puck, returning to her position on the lifeguard stand promptly afterward.

As soon as the compact hit the ice, Duncan slammed Leshawna aside, simultaneously tripping her and gaining control of the puck.

"Duncan!" _Of course_, Courtney figured, halfway up her lifeguard's ladder. Duncan would be the one to break a rule within the first two seconds of play. "That's a penalty!"

Duncan, already half-way across the rink, called back over his shoulder. "I know. What're you going to do about it?"

Courtney finished her climb and rose to her feet, glaring down at the weaving, green Mohawk on the ice. "Get off the ice! Two minutes!"

Slamming both Cody and Beth out of his way like it was nothing, Duncan swatted the puck over Trent's head and into the opposite goal. "Scooore!" The Bass erupted into a group roar, even though Duncan's success was credited more to his violent tendencies than to their teamwork.

"Wait!" Courtney cried. "He should have been suspended! That goal doesn't count!"

Duncan broke into a victory dance. "What're you talking about, Sweetheart?" he asked playfully, skating to the center of the rink and looking up at her. "Of course it counts!"

"It doesn't!" Courtney retorted, gripping the railing in front of her. "You tripped Leshawna. That's a minor penalty. All play from that point on is nullified!"

"I hear that!" Leshawna yelled from where she lay, partially incapacitated on the edge of the ice.

Duncan smirked, shrugging up at his referee. "Who ever said that was a rule?"

"I di—!" But Courtney was forced to cut herself off, cursing under her breath. Technically, she _hadn't_ ever gone over the rules; she'd just assumed that everyone would follow them. She was to blame, she knew, and should have figured that Duncan would feel the need to earn every penalty in the book. He'd used a momentary lapse in her judgement to his advantage, like usual. _Great_. "Fine," she muttered, glaring at him. "Your goal counts."

The Gophers groaned while the Bass high-fived.

"BUT," she continued, "and everyone hear this." She pointing an warning finger at the congregation as a whole. "We're playing by standard National Hockey League rules now. Everyone's familiar with them?" The mass below her nodded in sync. "Good!" Retrieving the compact, she prepared for the second face-off, which was between Eva and Ezekiel, though that didn't seem very fair. "…Go!"

As Eva and Ezekiel began their fight for possession, which mostly consisted of Eva hurling Ezekiel in Trent's direction, Duncan skated to the opposite half of the rink and smashed Justin into the snack shack.

"My face!" he screeched, gingerly touching his nose to make sure it was still there. (It was.)

"Duncan!" Courtney jumped down from her stand, ran over to Justin—who had crumpled in on himself—and yanked him to his feet. Then, turning to Duncan: "What was that for?!"

Duncan, still keeping half an eye on the game and pleased to see that Eva had everything covered, replied, "I never liked that guy."

Justin gave him the evil-eye. "Thanks, man."

"No problem."

Courtney hurriedly returned to her referee position and called, "Time-out! Five minute penalty to the _human_ _wrecking ball_ for body checking a player without possession of the puck!"

The Gophers cheered and the Bass boo-ed, but they got over it quickly and game-play resumed soon after.

Duncan skated lazy circles around his fellow players, dodging out of Eva's path whenever necessary. "Hey, Princess?"

"_What?"_

"_No_ to the five-minute penalty." He only had to egg her on a little bit more, he knew, and she'd be putty in his hands. Really _angry_ putty.

Courtney crossed her arms. "What do you mean, _no?"_

"I mean," Duncan said, "I'm not sitting out. You can't tell me what to do."

DJ, who refused to skate for safety's sake and opted instead to stomp around awkwardly, exited the game and plodded to Duncan's side. "Uh, dude?" he whispered into his ear. "She kind of _can_ tell you what to do. She's the ref."

"You think I don't know that?" he retorted, his tone hushed.

Courtney pounded a fist on her seat. "Of course I can tell you what to do!" she shouted back at him, ignoring DJ. "I'm the referee!"

"Told you so," DJ whisper-boasted.

Courtney overlooked their exchange, her eyes locked on the delinquent below her. "There's a five-minute penalty for body checking a player without the puck, you brute! Get off the ice!" Courtney jabbed her finger in the direction of the snack shack, which she'd decided would act as the penalty box.

Duncan stuck his tongue out at her so far that Courtney could see his piercing, which was, in and of itself, revolting. "Who's gonna make me?"

"I AM!" she screeched. "I'm the referee!"

"Ooooooh, scary." Adopting a high-pitched voice, Duncan mocked her. "I'm the referee, I'm the referee!"

It was at this point that Eva slid the puck past Trent again, bringing game-play to a temporary end. The remainder of the contestants turned to Courtney for further direction, only to see that she was _slightly_ preoccupied.

"I _am _the referee, and by not obeying my ruling, you're risking full expulsion from this game!"

"So, what are you going to do about it?" Duncan pressed, seeing that Courtney was finally irritated enough for him to carry out phase two of his plan. "You're the referee! It's not like you can get down here on the ice."

DJ jumped back into the crowd assembled behind Duncan to avoid the projectile Courtney had just launched in his friend's direction.

Duncan chuckled. Courtney's aim was usually spot on, but because she always threw a bit to the left when she was annoyed, she rarely hit him when it counted. "Face it, Darling," he called up to her. "You can't do a single thing to me as long as you're sitting high and mighty in that chair." He winked at her, as if implying a double meaning to his words.

Courtney opened her mouth to reply, but her words got caught in her throat.

"You know," Duncan continued, "I bet you don't even know how to play hockey! That's why you wanted to be the ref!"

The campers all exchanged perplexed glances.

"I can too play hockey!" Courtney asserted, leaning so far over the railing that a centimeter more and she'd have fallen straight onto Duncan's head. He probably wouldn't have minded.

"Prove it then!" he challenged, mentally congratulating himself. His Princess was so easy to control sometimes.

Courtney opened her mouth to reply, but then slammed it shut. Should she play? _Could_ she play? She could kick Duncan's butt, of that she was sure, but what about her post? Even if it wasn't her specifically, the game _did _need a referee… She couldn't abandon her station when she'd worked so hard to acquire it in the first place, could she? No, she absolutely could not. It just wouldn't be ethical.

"What's the hold up, Princess? You _scared_?"

And with that, Courtney decided that she could indeed abandon her post. Screw ethics. "Noah!" she screamed, climbing down the ladder, walking over to the boy, and grabbing his book out of his hands.

"Um, excuse me," Noah said dryly, eyeing Courtney with distaste. "I'm in the middle of a chapter, and finishing it is more important to me than whatever's going on in the world of your feeble form of entertainment."

"Noah," Courtney said again, flipping over the book and looking at the title. "Oh, hey!" she said, perking up, momentarily deterred. "This is a good book!"

Noah rolled his eyes. "No, Courtney, I'm reading it because it's the most God-awful novel on the planet. Now, can I have it back? Mr. Poirot just found a clue."

"Which clue?" she asked, opening to a random page and skimming over it.

"The train conductor's uniform button. Now would you _please _give me back my novel?"

Courtney pursed her lips. "Fine." She handed him his book. "Noah, I'm electing you to be the surrogate referee."

Noah pulled his head back made a face at her. "Are you joking? I have to find out who killed Mr. Ratchett. I don't have time to participate in your silly little amusements." He began flipping through the pages in an attempt to relocate his place.

"Everyone on the train is guilty! They all did it!" Courtney blurted out, ruining the ending before she could stop herself. Widening her eyes slightly, she sucked some air in through her teeth.

Noah, on the other hand, clenched his jaw, blinked slowly, and pulled his gaze up to hers. "I _know_ you did not just spoil this novel for me."

"Sorry," Courtney chirped, smiling guiltily. But, still trying to work things to her advantage, she asked, "_Now _will you referee?"

"Are you suffering from short-term memory loss? I said no. N-O. If—"

Duncan took this as his cue to interfere. "Bookworm," he growled, strolling over to where Noah sat. "Referee number one just said that you're referee number two. By my terms, that means 'Get your ass in that lifeguard chair before I sit it there for you.'" He cracked his knuckles threateningly.

Noah flicked his eyes from Courtney to Duncan to the lifeguard chair, weighing his options. "Fine," he muttered at last. "But I swear, Courtney, if you ruin another novel for me, I will personally break into your room and shred every single scrap of paper I find there."

"If you must," Courtney replied, unperturbed. Then, grabbing a broomstick, she slid onto the ice. "I'll play for the Gophers," she said, challenging Duncan with her gaze. "They're already short a couple players."

"_If you must_," Duncan mimicked nasally. Courtney smacked him. "Ref! That's a two-minute penalty for dangerous use of the stick!"

Noah ignored him, but Courtney didn't. "But we're not even playing yet!"

"Says who?"

"Says _everyone! _We're all just _standing_ here!" As Duncan leaned down to rub his shin, Courtney's eyes fell upon his stick, reminding her that he was playing with actual gear. "Hey!" she exclaimed, pointing to the carving. "That's an unfair advantage!"

Duncan laughed at Harold, who had quickly hidden his own behind his back. "You choose to notice this now?" he asked Courtney, turning back to face her. "You only care because _you're_ playing."

Courtney had to admit, that was true… "That's not true! It's all in the name of integrity, good sportsmanship, respect for others, not to mention—_where are you going?" _

Duncan skated to the snack shack and produced the third and final stick, spotting an opportunity and seizing it. "Would it change things if you had a legit stick too?" he asked, returning to the center of the rink and offering it to her like a sword.

"Oh. Well…" Courtney took the stick and inspected it, quickly discovering that it was flawless—_flawless_—and found herself faced with an intense moral dilemma. To accept or not to accept? To accept would mean to completely toss out each of the values she'd just highlighted, but to reject would mean giving Duncan an advantage. She couldn't have that! But then again, morals were important too… In the end, she found herself saying, "I suppose—I suppose I'll take it."

The remaining campers gasped, and the air was instantly flooded with a series of hushed murmurs.

Noah cleared his throat loudly, and the crowd silenced. Climbing down from the lifeguard stand, from where he'd been watching the entire exchange, he snatched up the puck and addressed them all. "Don't work yourselves into a panic, people. Courtney's a hypocritical maniac, Duncan's a manipulative maniac. We already knew that." Then, turning to a gaping Duncan and an affronted Courtney, he said, "Now, if you two aren't too busy trying to cover up your deep, eternal adoration for each other with excessive amounts of unnecessary squabbling, would you come get ready for the face-off?"

Courtney gracefully skated to the center of the rink, glaring at Duncan all the while. "Of course."

Duncan followed, returning her stare. "Bring it on."

But as the two gripped their carved sticks and settled into their preparatory poses, Noah's actual words dawned on Courtney.

"Hold on!" she protested. "I'm not trying to cover up my 'deep, eternal adoration' for this lout!"

Duncan snorted. "So you _do _have a deep, eternal adoration for me, then?"

"What? No! All I meant was—"

Noah held up the puck. "Ready, set, go." As he released his grip and it crashed to the ice, Courtney and Duncan put their full focus on the object, each struggling to overtake the other. Ultimately, Duncan managed to maneuver around Courtney, gaining control of the puck, and he smiled to himself, despite the intense glare he could feel boring into the back of his head.

* * *

Ooh, suspense. Who's going to win? Any guesses?

And now, some ridiculously long-winded notes from your two co-authors, which contain a fair amount of foreshadowing if you know how to find it:

**From strayphoenix: **I know I mentioned in an eariler chapter that **Rina** wrote one of my FAVORITE Courtney lines of all time. Well, with this chapter, she's written TWO of my favorite Courtney lines of all time! "Five minute penalty to the _human wrecking ball _for body checking a player without possession of the puck!" Watching the Winter Olympic hockey events, every time a player would body-check another, I would think of this line and burst out laughing. Now my family thinks I'm even MORE of a sadist than Chris :P

So Noah, our resident bookworm, got himself a nice chunk of chapter! We had to dry our computers off with hairdryers because his parts were dripping in so much sarcasm. Made a real mess on my floor, too. And of course, Duncan baited Courtney into a hockey love/grudge match, which should go interesting places. He got to give her the hockey stick he'd made for her too. (Just don't thank him YET, Courtney...)

Onto the next chapter! CHARGE!!!

**From ****Contemperina**: 10 points to Duncan for smacking Justin in the nose! Take that! Yeah! But minus 10 to Courtney for screwing her ethics. (Don't take that! No?)

That Duncan's a sly devil, right? His Mohawk powers are still going strong, obviously, and I don't plan on them letting up any time soon! And what about Courtney and her complete disregard for morals? As you all are familiar with, competition gets the best of her sometimes… (As in almost always.) But _especially_ when Duncan's there in front of her, practically shouting, "Ha ha-ha-ha _ha_ ha, my hockey stick is real and legit and better than yours!" It really _is _a rather intense dilemma, if you think about it. What would you have done?

And now, Noah. Noah Noah Noah Noah _Noah_! I'm a fan, really I am. Even if it takes a while to clean all the sarcasm off my computer screen whenever I write about him. ;) Is anyone familiar with the book he was reading? Put your guesses in the reviews, and we'll mention anyone who reads like Noah (a.k.a. knows the correct novel)! But, as for how I arrived at Noah's choice of fiction, he seems like the kind of person who likes a good mystery to me. I bet he solves them all before Poirot does. (*Hint hint*)

I have a feeling you'll like this upcoming chapter. A _lot_. In case you had doubts or something. So, as **stray** said, CHARGE!

_-=-_

We send out a collective "thank you!" to each and every one of you. You probably don't realize how immensely cool you are, in our eyes especially, so please take this ego boost as humbly as possible (paradox?) and continue to be the great audience you are! Which oftentimes starts with you clicking a link down there somewhere…

Thanks for reading! Please review. (:


	10. Never drop too many hints

Loyal readers! (Because if you've made it to Chapter 10, you are indeed quite loyal.) Thanks to you—reviews specifically—we've cracked 150 reviews in nine chapters! Seeing as Chapter 10 is an extra special milestone, the two of us have pulled out all the stops. What does this mean? It means, buckle your seatbelts; this chapter is intense.

If you'll recall, when we left Duncan, he was in the middle of an ice hockey/grudge match against Courtney. And now, we learn his fate…

* * *

**Rule 10: Never drop too many hints**

Frills were itchy. Definitely itchier than fleas and almost as itchy as military issue fleece blankets, which usually _came_ with fleas. Chef Hatchet, unfortunately for him, was one of a very elite, very select group of individuals who could claim to have personally experienced all three.

The mammoth marine brought a hand to his mouth to cover his early-morning yawn, click-clacking out of the preparatory challenge meeting he'd been required to attend with Chris and the camera crew. He was click-clacking (resentfully, of course) because he'd had to attend dressed in his French Maid uniform, for there'd been no time to change after wrapping up the night shift. And if the way Mr. _I'm-Too-Sexy-For-My-Face_ kept chuckling at him was any indication, he had a _really_ good idea why the meeting had been scheduled as early as it had.

* * *

**Gophers: 2, Bass: 4**

Courtney had always known that Duncan was violent, but it had never been as obvious as during their ice hockey game. Ten minutes in and her shoulder was already burning, partially because of the heat, but mostly because Duncan had just shoved her into Justin, which he seemed to openly regret a second later as they toppled to the ground in a fairly compromising position…

Duncan was winning, too.

* * *

After one or two cracks from Chris and an unfortunate intern, Chef had made it so that no one else dared comment on his wardrobe. As he pushed his maid cart out of the employee elevator en route to his room, he rubbed his cleft chin and wondered if modern technology would be able to restore the intern with use of his vocal chords anytime in the near future. Oh, well. "Whatever," as the kids said these days.

"Speaking of the infestation_…"_ Chef thought aloud, bringing his cart to a sudden halt in front of his room as a suspicion descended upon him. Now that he thought about it, he'd heard nothing but quiet from the adolescent vermin all day.

* * *

**Gophers: 5, Bass: 4**

Duncan had always thought that Courtney should come with a sign on her forehead—"Bloodthirsty When Competing"—but never had he been as right as he felt twenty minutes into the game. Courtney had elbowed him so hard, he could practically feel the bruise blooming on his ribcage, and if Courtney's elbows were half as solid as her resolve to beat the snot out of him, there would be a dent in his side for sure…

Oh, and Courtney was winning, too.

* * *

Chef had checked the security cameras earlier to make sure the miscreants were all up and about (not including the five or six of them who were too lazy to haul themselves out of bed by 9:00am. _Kids._) He'd also taken his sweet time spying on them with his security monitors, doing their normal, boring teenager things like gossiping and having a farting contest, which he briefly considered breaking up but decided against, just in case he would be tempted to join in and show them how it was _really_ done.

He'd been pleasantly surprised to find that even the skinny, nerdy white kid had cleaned out the pool filter (doing Chef's job _for_ him. Maybe Freckles had developed a sense of obligation) and the corn-fed, creepy kid had been trying to get the nasally book dork's attention. Yet that was all before his meeting, which had started over an _hour_ ago. Hatchet hadn't heard a single riot, verbal (or _less_ verbal) disagreement, teen versus teen showdown, or explosion since then.

* * *

**Gophers: 6, Bass: 6**

Courtney _hated_ it when the score was tied. Granted, it was better than losing, but it also meant you weren't good enough to win by a clean margin. Fortunately, there was still time left in the game (not that Noah was keeping track or anything, useless as he was. It was positively _awful_), and Courtney was determined to use that time to stick it to Duncan, starting by sweeping his feet out from under him.

That would definitely do the trick.

* * *

Now, a less experienced man would have taken the blissful silence inside the resort as good news and gone on with his day. But former Lieutenant (and presently Chef) Hatchet had fought in enough wars, lead enough rallies, toiled in enough battles, and cooked enough octopi to know that "no news" was never, _ever "_good news".

And on Playa De Losers specifically, it meant one thing and one thing only: _The delinquent was planning something._

* * *

**Gophers: 7, Bass: 7**

Duncan _loved_ it when the score was tied. Being in a tie was like fighting on common ground—you're a worthy opponent, I'm a worthy opponent, so let's do this! Still, Duncan always made sure he pulled ahead in the end, and this time was no different. Fortunately, there was still time left in the game, which he could use to get back at Courtney for tripping him (since Noah wouldn't notice, useless as he was. It was _awesome_.) Hopefully, Duncan would be able to shove her into someone other than Justin this time.

That would totally do the trick.

* * *

Switching to high alert (full Defcon-4 mode), Chef snatched his key ring out of his frilly pocket so he could check the cameras once again. Hopefully, he could catch the demonic, no-good criminal in preparation for the _act_, whatever it was, before the whole island went up in flames.

Sliding his many keys along the ring until he located the large, bronze one that lead to his room, he turned towards the door only to find that it was already open. A second later, however, once he'd poked his head inside curiously, Hatchet came to the conclusion that the gaping opening to his room was _not_ due to the door being open. Rather, it was due to the fact that his door was _missing entirely, a_nd there had been _no_ attempt to hide this fact.

"What the—?" Chef stared at the opening for a second in shock before his eye caught the glint of something further inside the room.

The floor of Chef Hatchet's room was a mess compared to the military issue tidiness of the rest of his residence, but even then, he knew he _never_ would have left his prized collection of kitchen knives—won in a spaghetti knitting competition—lying scattered about, dented and dulled from improper use. If it was hard to ignore the wood chippings and splinters littered all over his carpet, it was outright _impossible_ to overlook the larger chunks of wood scattered on the floor, hacked into bite-sized pieces the same color as his door.

And, concentrated in the middle of it all, a large portion of the wood chippings had been swept together into a messy pile, arranged, unmistakably, into the shape of a human skull.

A vein in Chef's temple began to throb, and he felt his hand gripping his key ring with so much force that the bronze circle bent inwards on itself; he looked down at his palm to see that it resembled a flattened oval rather than anything useful.

One glance at the security monitors sticking out from his bureau told him all he needed to know, and he spun on his (ruby red and sequined—very Dorothy) heels, not bothering to change. Catching that lowlife, he thought as he stomped in the direction of the resort pool, would win him more pride than he'd lose for showing up in a skirt. He _would _catch that no good punk, he swore, and when he did…

To Hell with solitary confinement. Chef Hatchet was going to throw that boy in front of a _firing squad._

* * *

"_Sorry_, babycakes," Duncan was saying, smirking and managing to look _completely_ unapologetic as he skated lazily across the ice. "That's not a call you can make anymore! Not since you climbed off your high horse."

Duncan watched as Courtney retrieved Lindsay's damaged-beyond-repair compact from where it had flown from the opposite end of the rink, off the ice, and onto the concrete pool edge. Since he'd been checking out her legs anyway (the gooseflesh on her naked calves was particularly distracting), he was further fascinated by how seamlessly she transitioned from stomping angrily on solid ground to gliding effortlessly over chlorinated ice, coming in his direction and glaring all the while. Geez, was there anything she _wasn't_ good at?

Well, _besides_ having a useful conversation with him, Duncan thought, fighting the urge to roll his eyes. That was about as likely to happen as never. _Which brings us back to…_

"A penalty is a penalty, Duncan!" she insisted. "My position doesn't have to do with any of this!" Courtney skated up to him and stopped _just_ short of a vacant goal as Duncan skated past and around her (although 'drift with intention to annoy' was a more suitable definition for what he was doing). She continued angrily, "It's two minutes against Eva for roughing _and_ a minor penalty! No substitutions!"

He crossed his arms over his chest, gliding sideways in order to continue facing her, and casually challenged, "You _know_, Peaches, 'roughing' can have a lot of interpretations according to your 'National Federation of Ice Hockey' rule—"

"She punched Cody in the face!" Courtney interjected, throwing an arm out to indicate where Bridgette, Harold, DJ, and most of the other campers were gathered around Cody, who sat on the ice rubbing his nose tenderly. Duncan couldn't actually remember if his nose had _always_ been that crooked, but he'd delivered and received enough good punches to know that the Code-meister was going to have raccoon eyes tomorrow for _sure_.

"You seriously want to slap _Eva_ with a penalty?" he asked, looping around Courtney to face the group on the far end of the rink. For her part, Eva stood off to the side, adjusting her hockey stick (really a pipeline and hand scrubber), looking bored, and waiting for game play to resume. "And I thought _I_ had a death wish."

Courtney's narrowed eyes hadn't left his moving figure, even though it was making her mildly dizzy—she'd never tried glaring so long, so hard at a moving object with a florescent Mohawk. Halfway to livid and long past fed up with all things Duncan-related, she cut off his circle with a quick sidestep, bringing him to a screeching halt just before he collided with her.

Poking him hard in the chest with the shaft of her stick, she parried his red herring with, "_Ohhh,_ no! _No_. You don't get to get away with just—just _batting_ those baby blue eyes of yours and derailing this conversation!"

Duncan blinked once, thrown off balance both physically (abrupt stops weren't his specialty) and by her comment. On the one hand, he was smug, seeing as "baby blue" was a _very _specific color designation for something Courtney claimed to ignore completely (_proof _that she was paying more attention to him than she pretended!) On the other hand, he did_ not_ "bat" his eyes.

From the distance, Geoff watched the two argue as his girlfriend and fellow ex-campers tried ("tried" being the operative word) to tend to Cody's wounded face. Shaking his head, he chuckled to himself. "They are _SO_ hot for each other, dude," he observed, more to himself than anyone else.

"Then I'm t-totally going to s-st-tand over there!"

Geoff turned to find Lindsay standing just behind him, teeth chattering as she hugged herself. A midriff bearing tank top and mini-skirt were definitely _not _ideal ice hockey apparel, he figured. And this was coming from the guy who wore the same cowboy hat and only slightly varied outfit every day of his life. But hey, it worked for him; don't fix it if it ain't broke or itchy, as they said.

Back on the ice, Geoff's best delinquent friend settled his face in a partial scowl and let Courtney have that one, resuming with, "Well, you still can't call a penalty, babe."

"You saw it as well as I did!" she shouted, calling him out.

"_I_ was watching the puck. Which is what _you_ should have been doing," he commented smugly, lightly poking her in the breastbone like she'd done to him a second earlier (though her reflexes swatted his hand away before it did anything more than brush across her blouse.) Swinging his hockey stick up and across his shoulders like a scarecrow, the delinquent continued, "And that's beside the point, anyway."

Her own hockey still gripped in hand, Courtney threw her arms up in the air. "Oh, then _please_, Captain Arbitrary!" she proclaimed, addressing the heavens and sounding mildly hysterical. "_Please_ tell _me_ what the _**point**_ is!"

Planting his hockey stick in a nick in the ice and enjoying himself far more than Courtney would have liked, Duncan leaned on his stick and jerked a thumb over his shoulder to indicate Noah, who was sitting cross-legged, still reading his book on the lifeguard stand behind him. "The _point_ is," he pressed, "that _Noah_ didn't see a thing."

He had to admit, forcing Noah into the substitute ref position had been one of his better calls. Duncan could have beaten Tyler to a bloody pulp right there on the ice (and boy, after the dude's third face-first slip-up, he was _tempted) _and the bookworm wouldn't have even lost his place.

"Face it, Princess," Duncan sighed, his eyes still glinting mischievously. He shrugged. "It's like it never happened."

_God grant me the patience not to _murder_ my ex-competitor on camera and in the presence of seventeen mentally handicapped witnesses, _Courtney prayed in her head as she dropped the compact back on the ice, clenching her teeth (an awful habit she was always trying to break.) Planting her hands on her hips, her hockey stick dug uncomfortably into her hipbone. It wasn't important, though; she had bigger, far more _irksome_ fish to fry.

"_Duncan_," she started, feeling like she was talking to a five-year old, "you can't just _pretend_ something like that never happened!"

"Why _not_?" he ribbed, leaning forward a little bit more. He locked eyes with her so intensely that it would have made Romeo and Juliet jealous.

Even though he was really just trying to distract her attention from the fact that he was preparing to make a move, Courtney felt her face flush and cursed herself for being such a _girl_. Normally, she would have blamed the redness in her cheeks on the heat in the hotel, but Harold's invention was screwing with her internal thermostat. She was freezing from the knees down and sweating from the ribcage up, and Duncan's expression was scrambling the space in between like eggs.

"Besides," he added, now smirking hugely as he repositioned his hockey stick. "_You _do it all the time." Slowly, for emphasis, he slid the blade of his hockey stick along the inside of one of her calves in an impromptu version of hockey footsie.

It was just about the next to last thing Courtney expected from him (the _very_ last being a 23-page written apology, if that put things into perspective); she reflexively jerked her leg back, so quickly that her foil shoes nearly slid out from under her, and she either had to bend at the waist and throw her arms out to maintain her balance (which she did) or eat the ice face first (unacceptable). After a second or two of flailing, during which Duncan didn't do anything to help, Courtney managed to straighten up again and glare at him fiercely, willing her gaze to bore a hole right through him and wipe that infuriating smirk off his face.

To Hell with patience. Courtney needed the fortitude to not get _caught_. "Noah!" she barked over her shoulder, loud enough that it got everyone's attention and not only the bookworm's. Noah himself jumped at the mention of his name, almost dropping his book from the lifeguard stand.

"Pay attention!" she directed, her gaze still honed in on Duncan as she straightened up and swung her hockey stick over her shoulder like a baseball bat. If she was going to Hell, she was going to earn _every_ single _second_ of the trip. "This is called a _penalty_!"

Still grinning, Duncan gripped his own stick with both hands, in case she wasn't threatening him just for show and he'd have to bring it up to parry her blow. (Better safe than sorry, right?) She'd been _less_ than threatening on several occasions already, and the results had been B-A-D bad—his family jewels could attest to that.

It was at that moment, however, that Chef Hatchet made his way onto the pool, though he had yet to notice that the "pool" was actually a "rink". Still dressed in his frilly maid's uniform and stomping around like Godzilla (if Godzilla was from Canada, had training in the army, and wore Dorothy-red heels), he would have been noticed immediately by all teens present if they hadn't been watching Courtney, in the middle of attempting Duncan's assassination, with a morbid fascination.

As it was, Chef zoned in on Duncan and had made it nearly all the way to the rink's edge before Cody noticed him, the blood instantly draining from his face and damaged nose. He pointed frantically, trying to give some form of warning.

"_Bah…Barigit_!" he stammered through his swollen lips, his finger shaking as he pointed in the direction of the livid Marine.

Bridgette examined his outstretched hand. "Oh man, Cody. Did she break your finger too?"

"_Bo! Bahts—!_" he pointed more urgently. "_Bahts Fhef! Bwee hab to—!"_

"_WHAT in seven HELLS is—?" _Hatchet roared, still gripping his key ring like a weapon, even though it looked more like a small metal Frisbee. He stopped short, though, as something amid the gathered campers (nearly all paralyzed with acute Hachetphobia) caught his attention.

Courtney's arms, ready to chop off a human head mere seconds ago, had turned to spaghetti at the expression on Chef's face. She stared at Hatchet like a deer caught in headlights, her hockey stick resting harmlessly on one of her shoulders. Duncan, on the other hand, eyes darting between his love interest and arch-nemesis, was still clutching his hockey stick tightly in two hands, just in case he had to defend himself from both Courtney _and _Hatchet (though in his opinion, Courtney was oftentimes the scarier of the two.)

The position of the two hockey sticks from Hatchet's point of view, however, offered an excellent view of everything he needed to know: the handle of Duncan's stick was discolored in the shape of the number one, and an area on the blade of Courtney's stick was clearly lighter and in the shape of the letter S. Room **1S. **His room number.

Chef gritted his teeth so hard, his face turned red and the vein in his temple nearly exploded. To Duncan and Courtney, it looked like he wanted to say something, _scream_ something at them at the top of his lungs, but all that managed to make it past his clenched teeth was a strangled, but still incredibly menacing, snarl. "_**RRRRRrrrrrrr…!**_"

He didn't need to say anymore, though, because Geoff finished the sentence. Without even waiting for his own signal, Geoff spun on his heels and tried to sprint (though he kind of just galloped in place thanks to the foil shoes, à la style Scooby-Doo) as he instructed the others to, "_RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!_"

This time, no one needed to be told twice. The campers scattered as Hatchet, with a speed that shouldn't have been possible for someone of his size, made a dash for the pool surface. By this time, he was seeing far too much red to realize the implications of the fact that teenagers were not yet able to stand on liquid water, so he blindly stomped onto the edge of the rink. Then, in one impossibly-long second, he slipped backwards onto the ice, hitting it with his full weight and causing the already questionably solid surface to crack, producing in the process a sound like the peal of thunder.

Unsure if she was more terrified of Chef chopping her into mystery meat-ready bits or drowning in two meters of freezing water, the sound of cracking ice awoke Courtney from her paralysis, her CIT training (and very basic survival skills) informing her to get out of there, _fast. _But by the time both Duncan and Courtney realized exactly what was happening, the cracked ice had already zigzagged halfway to where they were standing, almost completely across the rink from the rest of their scrambling companions.

Duncan immediately tried to take a step back, making a break for the solid edge of the rink, just as the same thought crossed Courtney's mind. She pushed off with the intention to skate past Duncan and to the rink edge behind him quick as she could, yet she couldn't get enough push to go far (foil reduced _friction_ whether you wanted it to or not, apparently.) But as she passed Duncan, the ice cracked in the space between them, throwing Courtney off balance and forward—straight into him.

She reached out to grab something to keep herself from falling. Unfortunately for her (_and_ Duncan), the only thing in grabbing distance was the boy himself, who looked first confused at the physical contact and then surprised when she inadvertently pulled them both down to the ice, knocking his legs out from under him with her flailing hockey stick in the process.

In accordance with the Laws of Gravity (the _real_ ones, _not _the Laws of Logic), Courtney landed back-first on the icy surface. The CIT had a mere two seconds to freak out over the situation before Duncan came crashing down right on top of her, completely sandwiching her between his torso and the increasingly unstable ice, thus knocking the wind out of her and sending her into _complete _panic.

Unable to brace his hands against the slippery surface, Duncan landed with his arms splayed on either side of her shoulders, his face mere centimeters from hers; he could count all (eleven, twelve, thirteen…) fourteen freckles between her eyes.

They stared at each other for a moment, unsure of what to do. Courtney's entire face was flushed red, but Duncan couldn't be sure if it was because she was pissed at him, frostbitten from the temperature of the ice, had windburn from the game, or because their alignment could have easily been misinterpreted as being _quite_ conducive to activities other than ice hockey.

Duncan felt his mouth go desert dry as he tried to keep a straight face, wracking his reeling mind for something clever to say. "Well, uh… This totally redefines 'body-checking'."

"Don't _move_ you idiot!" Courtney hissed at him in warning, grabbing at her hockey stick with one hand and at the front of Duncan's shirt with the other (though this hand was painfully trapped between their bodies.)

The ice groaned more ominously beneath them.

"Oh, _believe_ me, Princess," he promised, a lusty smirk finding its way back onto his lips and his saliva glands starting to work again as he named and identified _exactly_ which parts of her were touching which parts of him. "I have absolutely _no_ plans of doing so."

But before Duncan got a real chance to enjoy the situation, he was lifted clean off Courtney—completely off the ground, too—by the neck of his shirt. After a millisecond of being violently whipped through the air, it was Chef Hatchet's face that was just centimeters from his own. His very, _very_ angry face…

"Morning, Chef!" Duncan said brightly by way of greeting, completely unperturbed by the enraged Warden of Wawanakwa. "Weird weather we're having, huh?"

* * *

Really, Duncan. How do you come up with this stuff?

And now, some ridiculously long-winded notes from your two co-authors, which explain why Chapter 10 is so great:

**From strayphoenix: **Drama, drama, DAH-rama! So THAT'S where Duncan got the wood for Chef's door! Lots of you guys were wondering about that, and I was almost dreading someone was going to guess it before we revealed it (we made foreshadowing to it WAY back in chapter one. Check if you don't believe me!) but no worries. It's all "Hakuna Matata" here on Playa De Losers!

*stray ducks as several items are chucked at her head* Uh...right then! Moving along...

So as an extra special bonus for helping us hit ten chapters of awesomeness and over 150 reviews, we present to you: Contempephoenix's Definitive Duncney Soundtrack! Below you will find what **Rina** and I have decided are the best 15 Duncan/Courtney songs out there, ranging through different genres, artists, and music styles. Now, we feel we should explain our selection process before the angry e-mails of "why didn't you include THIS song?" start pouring in.

When compiling our list, we specifically took into account the _relevance_ of the song to DxC's particular brand of attraction (there are many songs out there that can be considered generic 'couple' songs such as "Love Story" or "I Knew I Loved You" etc.) as well as the _style_ of music. (We tried to pick tracks that you could definitely see being on either Duncan or Courtney's iPods, which ruled out show tunes and anything older than the 90's.) But most importantly, we tried to keep away from as many of the well-known, popular, CLICHÉ DxC songs that everyone already associates with them (i.e. "Bad Boy", "Good Girls Go Bad", "Sk8er Boi" etc.) so that we could maybe expose you to music you haven't heard before. Granted, there are a few popular ones on the list, but we allowed them because we thought no one might have made the connection that they could work as DxC songs before ;) With that, I hope you enjoy!

**From Contemperina: **_FREEZE!_ Don't touch that scroll bar! …Are you touching it? I hope not. There are some things I need to tell you first.

About the chapter—ah, so it all ties together! Not _all_ of it all of it, but at least the door question is answered. Will Chef get his revenge? Or will Duncan escape? And, most importantly, if Chef interrupted the hockey game, _then_ _who won? _It's coming. Patience is a virtue. So is grammar.

Now, since **stray** built up the playlist tension so much, (as well she should have. I've had it on repeat for days), a little information:

- The songs are listed in 15-1 order, AKA "A really great DxC song" to "The most applicable DxC song on the planet".

- Stray and I contributed equally to this list. The process went about like this. 1) Suggest as many songs as we can think of. 2) Weed out all the not-so-good/cliché ones. 3) Decide on the order—a _very_ painful process. Rina: "I don't know, I think we could move that song higher." stray: "Okay. But in that case, _this_ song should go lower." Rina: "Okay." (Obviously kidding. The process wasn't painful at all.)

- Each song was picked for a specific reason, whether it be the lyrics, the beat, or the overall feeling (and, in the higher numbers, all of these reasons put together.) After the playlist, there is a slight insight into our thought processes.

- We do not necessarily support all the artists on the list *cough Lambert cough*, but we do go so far as to allow that they make GREAT music. Therefore, I encourage you to hit up iTunes (or whatever music-organizing system you use) and make your own! (Support the underdogs, woo-hoo…)

- I have to admit, one or two of the songs took a while to grow on me. What this means for you is: keep an open mind, and don't be afraid to take multiple listens.

- If you've made it through these A/Ns, you're awesome.

And now, without further ado, we present your present. ;)

* * *

Contempephoenix's Definitive Duncney Soundtrack

15. Whataya Want from Me, by Adam Lambert

14. The Way I Loved You, by Taylor Swift

13. Finder's Keepers (Acoustic Version) by You Me At Six *There's a regular version too, if that suits your fancy.*

12. Take It Home, by The White Tie Affair

11. Bang Bang (feat. Adam Levine) by K'naan

10. Shake Me Like A Monkey, by Dave Matthews Band

9. Savior, by Rise Against

8. Animal, by Neon Trees

7. I Don't Wanna Be In Love (Dance Floor Anthem) by Good Charlotte

6. No Good, by Kate Voegele

5. Whistle for the Choir, by The Fratellis

4. Shiver, by Maroon 5

3. Mercy, by Duffy

2. The Curse of Curves, by Cute Is What We Aim For

1. Electrify, by MuteMath

Explanations

In case you listened to the songs and _somehow_, by _some_ stretch of the imagination, don't see how they're DxC related, **stray** categorized them for you.

Numbers 14, 6, and 3: songs that are told, more or less, from Courtney's point of view, commenting on how she sees the relationship.

Numbers 11, 10, 9, and 2: songs that are told, more or less, from _Duncan's_ point of view, commenting on how _he _sees the relationship.

Numbers 15, 13, 12, 8, 7, 5, 4, and 1: songs that pertain to both sides of the relationship and the overall dynamic between Duncan and Courtney.

If you want more help than this, feel free to ask questions in a review and/or PM. We'd be happy to explain ourselves.

* * *

We hope you have fun with your new music.

**EDIT: **To see fanart from this scene, go here (without the spaces): contemperina .deviantart. com/art/ The-Art-of-Playa-Ice-Hockey-182980120?q=&qo=

Thanks for reading! Please review. (:


	11. Never air your dirty laundry

Hello everyone! Welcome to the beginnings of chapter eleven. The two of us would like to apologize for the more substantial time-gap between this posting and the last. We were painfully separated from our beloved computers for one of our working weekends, which set us a week behind schedule. The good news is, we are no longer incapacitated. Hurrah!

In other news, we would like to thank everyone who voted in The Readers Have Chosen poll this story was nominated for. TAOP made a close second (First being "Death Note" for those interested), and we are extremely honored to have received the recognition.

If you'll recall, when we left Duncan, Chef had just busted the entirety of Playa for flash-freezing the pool and playing ice hockey on it. And now, we learn his fate…

* * *

**Chapter 11: Never air your dirty laundry**

A good half hour passed before Chef could locate all of Playa De Losers' nineteen guests and accumulate them in the hotel lobby. The easiest was Courtney, who he simply lifted up off the ice singlehandedly, a feat made even more impressive by the fact that he was still holding her not-quite-boyfriend painfully by the Mohawk with his other hand. As for the most troublesome, he actually had to send out four crewmen on jet skis to fetch Izzy who had been trying to make it to the mainland, giggling madly and using a raft she'd constructed out of lawn chairs, inner tubes, toothpaste, and six feet of piping she'd acquired from heaven knew where_._

But Hatchet had succeeded at last, and with the kids lined up in two rows of nine like convicts (a feeling Duncan knew all too well), he paced up and down the expanse of the luxury lobby to the click-clack of his heels, lecturing and doling out punishments to each for his or her involvement in damaging the pool filter, or as he put it, "completely destroying an extr_eme_ly fancy, _to_tally functioning, _highly_ expensive aquatic contraption that's gonna be comin' out of _my _paycheck and _your _hides!"

Amazingly, no one ratted out Duncan as the orchestrator of the entire ice hockey league from beginning to end. The thought _did_ cross Courtney's mind a few times, though, while she waited anxiously between Noah and Beth, keeping up a steady string of angry glances at Duncan on Noah's other side as the delinquent hummed something to himself, leisurely rocking back on his heels. She _could_ have gone and blabbed on him and saved everyone from their chores. She knew full well none of the rest of the campers would ever do it, either out of loyalty or because they were scared marshmallowless of him, yet Courtney could have saved everyone the drama. Except_…_

Except the thought of him gleefully sabotaging his chores by himself in some secluded corner of the island gave her _such_ acute déjà vu for the last time she'd been on Wawanakwa…

Courtney shook her head sharply and crossed her arms across her chest in defiance against her very own thoughts, staring off into nowhere in particular. It really _wouldn't_ make a difference whether or not she told Chef, she decided, because he was a sadist and was going to punish them all anyway_. _She was a future lawyer and politician, after all. She could definitely bear some pointless lawn mowing or tedious wall painting, if only for the sake of not repeating her final TDI escapade and ending up doing something career crushing and irrevocably stupid like when she sabotaged Chris and Chef.

Like when she kissed Duncan.

Courtney sent another glare in Duncan's direction in an attempt to accentuate her thoughts, her hockey stick still in hand. (Chef had already confiscated Duncan's but had absentmindedly left Courtney with hers in the process of rounding everyone up.) She was mad at Duncan for—_everything,_ and she was going to _stay_ that way no matter how strongly her hormones pumped or how furiously the butterflies in her stomach flapped their wings when he responded to her glare by blowing her a teasing kiss. The cheek of that boy knew no bounds.

Duncan just smirked as Courtney flipped him off and looked pointedly away, continuing whatever mental tirade she was on. (Duncan was pretty sure he was the subject, in any case.) Granted, his whole "Win Courtney Over by the End of the Day" scheme hadn't counted on Chef still being on Playa to catch them, since it _should_'ve been an elimination day (by Duncan's far-from-faultless math, anyway) and the man _should_ have been however many K's away they were from Wawanakwa—not still stalking around their hotel. And _especially_ not wearing that pansy outfit.

Duncan snickered, casting another glance at Hatchet, who was yelling at "Braceface and Johnny Bravo"—Beth and Justin—to go defrost the frozen pool with hairdryers from the utility closet. So maybe Chef was a hitch in the plan, Duncan admitted. So what? The one and only thing Duncan enjoyed more than getting under Courtney's skin was a challenge worthy of his many talents, and improvisation was his specialty.

So, once he was absolutely sure that Chef was in hearing range, Duncan leaned over to Geoff, who stood on his left side. "_God_, Geoff, I sure hope I'm not assigned to do chores with _Courtney, the Almighty CIT._"

"What?" his friend asked, turning to stare at Duncan in complete confusion. Geoff knew he was a little short-changed when it came to relationship savvy, but he'd been pretty darned sure that Duncan was totally _into_ that "Almighty CIT". He'd had Bridgette and DJ confirm his theory too, just in case.

"_What?_" said CIT hissed, snapping out of her previous thoughts at the mention of her name and spinning to glare venomously at her addressor, right over the top of Noah's head.

"I mean, how much would that _blow, _dude?" Duncan continued in a loud stage whisper, ignoring Courtney's inclusion and rolling his eyes for emphasis. "She's been totally _hitting_ on me and like,_sexually harassing_ me since I got here_" _—he cringed exaggeratedly—"and I _swear,_ if I got stuck with her doing something, just the _two of us,_ that was _lame_ and _ridiculously tedious_, I think I'd throw myself under a _bus_. I mean, _seriously_," Duncan pushed on, allowing himself a smirk, "I can only put up with looking at that _face _and listening to that _voice_ for so long, man. You get what I'm saying?"

Noah sighed as he unfortunately found himself once again stuck in the middle of the most ironic love affair reality TV had ever seen—for the _second time _in the same hour, no less. The bookworm flipped the page of his book dismally and wondered, for the umpteenth time, how he'd let his mother talk him into auditioning for the accursed show. Shoving his head further into his novel, he noticed Courtney's narrowing eyes and contemplated whether or not to duck; the girl looked ready to snap her hockey stick in half with her bare hands.

"Why you _boorish, aggravating_—!"

Before Courtney could comb through her extensive mental thesaurus for another word to describe Duncan and the insolence she had just suffered through, a shadow eclipsed her. Chef, having overheard everything Duncan had just said, stepped into her vision, and Courtney's mouth snapped shut of its own accord at the murderous look in the man's eyes.

"_You two!"_ he bellowed, pointing to Duncan (who was smiling innocently) and Courtney (who was trying to compose herself.) "Jailbird and Miss Picky Pants! I'm assigning you two _door thieves_—"

"But I didn't even—!"

"—to a day's work of laundry duty!" Chef continued right over Courtney's objection as the Marine scribbled something on a miniature notebook he'd pulled from his frilly pocket. "Report to the laundry room at 1600 hours!" Ripping the sheet out of the notebook, he slapped the note to Courtney's forehead.

"But—_but—_!" Courtney stammered, gingerly pulling the little sheet of paper from her face. As Chef began to walk away, she flipped it over and saw that it contained the measurements and instructions on how to operate the laundry machine (_machine_, in the singular) and the location of the laundry room.

"But—_no!_" Courtney insisted, wide-eyed. She stepped out of the line to follow Chef as he traveled to talk to someone else. "If I have to work with _him—_" she sneered and pointed to Duncan without looking at him, a slight hint of desperation reading on her face, "in a closed environment for any longer than fifteen seconds, I'll kill him! I'm serious," she added matter-of-factly, trying to convince Chef that she wasn't exaggerating, though the Marine was ignoring her completely. She stomped her foot in frustration. "This isn't _fair_! I—!"

It was then that Courtney noticed Duncan was smirking at her and realized that she was basically driving his point home, fulfilling her designated role in his twisted little con, and faster than Duncan could react, the "Almighty CIT" went from frantic to furious and swung the hockey stick she still possessed swiftly into his gonads. As Duncan wheezed and crumpled in on himself (to unanimous winces and moans of pain from the nine other male teens), Chef spun on his heel to turn back to Courtney, swiping her stick from her.

"_DO I HEAR A DAY AND A HALF, SOLDIER?_" he roared in her face.

"_No_, Sir…" Courtney replied weakly, shrinking back into her place in line.

With a huff, Chef moved on to someone else, but not before smacking the collapsed Duncan himself with the pilfered hockey stick.

* * *

"Tsk, tsk! _Carving_ Chef's door! _Freezing_ the pool! Picking _Trent_ as a goalie! The audacity! The redundancy! The underhandedness!"

"Oh, come off it!" Duncan snapped, rolling his eyes as he, Chris, and Courtney stood in different corners of the main elevator, rising floors. He and Courtney were at extreme opposite ends, distancing themselves as much as possible (Courtney's invention, not his), and they were the only two balancing ungainly laundry baskets, full of gross teenagers' clothes and underwear. _From the last seven weeks. _"You're just jealous you didn't think of it first and mad you couldn't get it on camera!" Duncan accused, shifting the baskets so that they worked his other bicep.

"While that may be true," Chris began, lifting a finger in his lecture mode, "that still doesn't permit the kind of vandalism you guys pulled off today. Unsupervised! With extremely unsafe homemade gear! And I _do_ seem to be missing one of my cameras…" he added, rubbing his chin stubble in thought.

Duncan smirked at Courtney conspiratorially, but she missed the gesture entirely, too busy fighting her intense desire to bang her forehead against the wall of the elevator in slow and steady repetition. (It was a faster way to lose brain cells.)

"Ah! Here we go," Chris announced as the elevator pulled to a stop, though the elevator music just went on repeat. He ignored his earlier problem completely; someone would track down the camera eventually, he figured—that was just the kind of great crew he'd hired! "Fourth floor!"

"What?" Courtney questioned, returning to the present and picking up one of her baskets from the floor. "I didn't know this building _had_ four floors."

"It doesn't. For _you_," Chris said cryptically, smirking as he turned a key on the elevator which opened a small access panel. Duncan, from his vantage point behind Chris, could see a number '4' on a button inside the panel, but an extra leg had been added to it in permanent marker, so it looked like the letter 'H'.

"What's the H for?" he asked as Chris pressed the button and the gay '_nah nah nahs'_ of the elevator song were replaced by the opening notes of Bach's 2nd Concerto (which happened to be one of Courtney's favorite pieces.)

Turning to them, Chris placed a hand over his heart. "H stands for 'Handsome'! 'Honorable'! 'Humanitarian'!"

Noting Duncan and Courtney's glares of disbelief, their host dropped his hand and rolled his eyes. "It stands for 'Host', dudes. _Duh_. Of which, there is only…_one._" He gestured to himself happily, "Me!" Chris did a little victory dance in celebration of his mere existence.

With that, the elevator doors in front of him slid open, revealing not a dingy, carpeted hallway with multiple doors and dimming wall sconces, but what _had_ to be the most elaborate penthouse suite Duncan and Courtney had seen in their lives, on television or otherwise. It took up the entire _floor _of the building, and Playa was a _large_ building.

In the center of the room was an ornately carved four-poster bed, surrounded by lacey curtains, in which five people (and an Owen) could have slept comfortably. The wall opposite the plush bed held an elaborate mantelpiece and a large flat screen TV, surrounded on all sides by a sound system built for an IMAX cinema. One door on the far side of the room opened to a bathroom with a hot tub for twelve, and a door beside it lead to a runway-long closet of clothes. All four walls were decorated with either trophy cases (one held 5 Gemmie awards, each engraved 'Best Reality TV Show Host') or numerous portraits of none other than Chris McLean, standing, sitting, laying, or doing some other activity. (These were done in every style of art know to the human race, as AP Art History student Courtney could attest.)

Unconsciously, Duncan and Courtney leaned into each other to better stare out the elevator door in a daze, for no other reaction came to mind.

Chris leisurely stepped into his room as a king would step into his castle after a time away, and after a few more seconds of admiration, Duncan let out a low whistle. "Man. _Now _I know what I'd have done with my hundred grand…"

The two teens made to step out of the elevator, still appraising the lavishness (gaudiness?) of the room, when they were brought up short by Chris holding up his hand to their faces.

"_Bah-pah-pah_!" the host chastised, stopping them both in their tracks. "_Whoa_ there, you two. No one goes into _The McLean Cave _except _the McLean_." He made a cheesy buff pose to accentuate his point. "Sorry, brahs!"

Snapped out of her daze by Chris's skater drawl, Courtney became aware of just how close she'd gotten to a certain delinquent (whom she detested) and rocketed back to her corner of the elevator like Duncan possessed a highly contagious disease—spelt D-O-U-C-H-E-B-A-G-E-R-Y.

It was just as well because the next thing she knew, Duncan was in the middle of asking, "Then how are we supposed to pick up yo—" when he was bowled over by the tidal wave of dirty laundry Chris released into their elevator.

"_Wha_—this is all _your _laundry?" Courtney gasped, horrified by the pile of clothes that flooded the elevator up to her knees.

Chris just grinned and propped up a solid gold wheelbarrow against the wall beside the door as Duncan emerged from under the mass of clothes, gasping for air and pulling a red and white Hawaiian shirt (which Courtney had _never _seen Chris wear) from off the top of his head. "With a face like this, Courtney," Chris explained, "you've always got to look your freshest! And you should always have your entire wardrobe washed regularly," he added, "just in case you, oh, _might_ need to wear something that _might_'ve gotten dirty. Once."

Duncan opened his mouth to protest while Courtney looked ready to launch into a rant, but a shrill beep, coming from somewhere on Chris's person, cut them short.

"Well, that's my signal to check out for today's challenge, dudes!" he announced, fiddling with his very expensive watch until the beeping stopped. Winking at them, he reached around into the elevator and pressed the button to send it down. "Drama doesn't instigate itself, you know! Lay-ters!"

And with that, the elevator shut in their faces, leaving them with several unanswered questions, tension so thick a chainsaw couldn't have sliced it, and enough dirty laundry to risk surpassing the elevator's maximum weight capacity.

* * *

"Hmmm… I dunno, babe. What do _you_ think?" Duncan asked his laundry partner as he leaned against the dryer, ogling the pair of purple, lacey panties he was twirling around his finger. "Lindsay, Izzy, or Katie?"

In the middle of sorting jeans from her fourth pile of clothes, Courtney cast him a sidelong glare and snatched the panties from him, nearly taking off his finger in the process. (She missed, unfortunately.) Folding them into a tight, nearly microscopic square, she threw them across the room with impeccable aim into a far basket filled with bras, folded beige skirts, and several pieces of garbage that the owner had mistakenly thrown in the hamper instead of the garbage can.

"Lindsay, huh? She always struck me as more of a _thong_ chick," he commented smugly, digging through his first pile of clothes to see if he came across any more girls' underwear. "Shoulda figured, though. Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Idiot probably do the whole matching thing, even with their undies." He snorted as the thought came to him._ "Ha! _Izzy's probably crazy enough to go commando!"

_Breathe…breathe…_Courtney commanded herself, tensely folding more clothes. _If you leap over there to throttle him now, you'll upset all the clothes piles you've already sorted. Just _breathe_..._

There was barely space for the two of them to _stand _in the laundry room, let alone travel from basket to basket—there were 26 of them in total (18 campers + 8 baskets for Chris), littering the miniscule room. Keeping the mixed "dirty" ones close meant positioning the individual, camper-specific, "clean" baskets quite a distance from the machines. Sorting laundry was turning into more of a carnival game than a chore. For Duncan, anyway.

The delinquent came up a moment later with an extra-small pair of monkey-print boxer briefs from his pile, a confused expression on his face. He was quite sure he'd have noticed one of the guys wearing such gay boxers. Even then, they were only small enough to fit either Noah or Harold, whom Duncan knew for a fact wore tightey-whiteys—both of them.

"Who the—?" he started, flipping them inside out to check the tag. He was also quite sure he'd have noticed if one of the guys on the island had a name that started with a 'B'.

Even though Duncan hadn't spoken to her directly, Courtney finished sorting her pile of newly dried clothes and snatched the boxers from Duncan as well, folding them neatly and tossing them into a basket just beyond the Dirty Clothes Zone—a basket that contained four sets of swimsuits and a light blue hoodie.

"_Bridgette?_ Malibu wears _boy shorts_?" Duncan sniggered, examining the target basket to make sure his eyes weren't deceiving him. "That's…pretty freaking hot, actually."

Courtney desperately wanted to inform him that,_ "She wears them to _sleep_, you perverted moron!"_ Instead, she bit her tongue and settled for grabbing a full basket of dirty whites and tossing them into the washing machine, imagining instead that she was tossing Duncan and his stupid smirk off a bridge. Into a pit of sharks. That hadn't been fed in a week.

Oblivious to her dark musings, if not her mood, Duncan ceased working completely, opting instead to lean against the dryer, watching her shove her head into the top-loading washer to make sure a stray colored sock hadn't slipped in with the whites. Although, the thought of turning Chef's underwear and socks pastel pink was extremely tempting…

"You know that you have to talk to me _sometime,_" he informed her as she withdrew herself from the inside of the machine and went to grab another pile of whites.

"Wanna bet?" Courtney snapped before she could stop herself. His confidence was just so _damn_ infuriating, she felt she was going to explode just watching him stand there, _oozing_ coolness.

Duncan smirked, tipping over the basket of dirties by his feet so that the clothes tumbled out over his shoes. "C'mon, darling," he hedged. "This isn't _that_ bad…" He used his foot to pick up what looked suspiciously like Harold's dirty underwear and tossed it into one of Courtney's piles.

Courtney slammed the lid of the washer down with a resounding _BANG! _and jammed her finger into the appropriate wash cycle. "No. _No_, Duncan. It _is_ that bad."

"Princess—" he began, but Courtney steamrolled right over him.

"When I think of 'not that bad' I think of _stealing_ food out of Chef's fridge—" She reached across him and grabbed one of the already washed baskets, refusing to meet his gaze. "_Negotiating_ with known criminals—" She slammed said basket down on top of the washer in front of her. "The _bombing_ of Hiroshima! This?" She began folding the clothes roughly. "_This_ is _**that bad!**__"_

After a moment or two of reviewing her words, however, her folding softened as she glanced around for any chance cameras, rushing to amend, "...Okay, wait, not exactly _Hiroshima_—"

"Nope, Princess," Duncan interrupted, holding up a hand. "Just stop."

"No, seriously," Courtney insisted, "That was politically incorrect. I _really_ meant something else, like—"

"No, I see how it is," Duncan replied coolly as he feigned indifference, slamming a fist on the ancient dryer to get it to stop. "Your self-confidence issues are more important than entire generations of Chinese people. It's cool."

Whatever calmness Courtney had briefly acquired fled her instantaneously as she finally turned to Duncan. "_THEY WERE JAPANESE!"_

Duncan shrugged (and smirked, though Courtney missed this) as he started shoveling stuff out of the dryer and onto the floor. "I think you're being kinda overdramatic, babe."

Courtney dropped the pants she'd been violently folding and turned, gaping, to stare at Duncan. "_**Over dr**_—? _**I'm **_being over—?" Without warning, she threw her head back and laughed, but in such a high-pitched tone it sounded nowhere near normal. Truth be told, Duncan thought she sounded almost _maniacal_; like one of those evil villains in the Saturday morning cartoons.

"_Yes_, well," Courtney said, now sounding like the evil villain explaining his plan for world domination, "_I_ think your moral compass points to the magnetic _south_ of a _distant planet,_ not even yet _visible_from our solar system."

She took a moment's pause to recover before snatching the pants she'd been folding from the floor. Then, realizing what had just happened, she added miserably, "…And _why_ am I still talking to you?"

Duncan grinned at her suavely, the clothes in the dryer (and on the floor) forgotten. "Because I'm _irresistible_?"

_Most definitely. "_NOT," Courtney spat, turning away from him to throw her own olive Capri pants into her pile of clothes.

"Totally why you can't keep your hands off me," he insisted, kicking one of his heels against the metal contraption he leaned against.

Instead of responding, Courtney lifted the washer lid to stuff more clothes into it (the faster she got through the clothes, the faster she could get _out _of the begrimed room and _away_ from Duncan), pushing on them with her full weight so they would all fit. She then returned to her unsorted pile.

Confident she would crack eventually, Duncan resumed pulling clothes out of the dryer and dumping them messily into the empty basket he'd just noticed beside his foot. After quite a few minutes had passed, however, and Courtney continued with the silent treatment, Duncan actually began to worry she might have been serious about never talking to him again.

That, of course, was a major problem, whether she knew it or not.

"Whataya want from me, huh?" he demanded suddenly, abandoning his most recent carnival game: blindly tossing clothes into the dryer. _"_An _apology_?"

"Don't distract me while I'm in the middle of pointedly ignoring you," Courtney replied primly, checking on the clothes in the washer.

Duncan slammed the dryer closed and jabbed at a few buttons, not caring that it didn't actually start. "Which is why I'll just say it _again._"

"Which is _why," _Courtney retorted, "I'm praying I never have to see your face again as soon as they wrap up this accursed show and its stupid reunion special."

The delinquent blinked at her in confusion. "There's a reunion special?"

She slammed the lid down again (it was starting to feel like they were in the middle of thunderstorm) and spun around to Duncan, throwing her hands up. "Good lord! Where have you _been?_"

Scowling and leaning on the dryer once more, Duncan replied sarcastically, "Well _apparently,_ I've been on some god-forsaken planet on the other side of the universe."

At that, the CIT stomped her foot in frustration—so hard that it hurt against the concrete floor. "Ugh! I _hate _you!" she proclaimed, her hands balling to fists at her sides.

Trying to ignore the ribs of pain shooting up her leg (her wrist was still throbbing from how it had twisted under Duncan's body weight, too) she turned back around with the intention of resuming her laundry duties. _Why on Earth do you even _bother_, girl? _something inside her asked. It was one of the few questions she honestly couldn't answer.

But Courtney's miniature temper tantrum had only served to remind Duncan of why he found her so crazy attractive in the first place. None of it worried him in the slightest—after all, he'd heard her say all _that_ before. A smirk found its way back to his face as he leant further on the drying machine and drawled, "_Riiiiiight_. _Sure_ you hate me. Only if it's _opposite_ day."

In a reaction that surprised them both, Courtney kicked the loudly rumbling washing machine so fiercely that it spluttered to a halt (leaving a size 8 dent on the side of the metal contraption), and spun around to Duncan, something vicious gleaming in her eyes.

"_No_, Duncan!" she yelled at him, her pent up fury washing out of her in one sweeping tidal wave of emotion. "_Not_ on opposite day! _**Every**_ day! _All day long_! I hate you from the _second_ I wake up in the morning to the _second_ I go to sleep at night and every, single, _freaking_ second in between!

"I hate the stupid metal you put in your face that makes you look like a fugging _ring toss_, and I absolutely _abhor_ the fact that you don't give a _damn_ about what anyone says or feels or thinks about you! I hate how you can just—_waltz _in and out of my reality like you know _exactly_ where the back doors are and—and tie up my tongue faster than any other semi-upright _biped_ to ever walk this planet! I hate that every time I even try _talking_ to you—about _anything_!—it feels like I'm trying to reinvent the goddamn wheel!"

Duncan, who stood there staring at her in stunned silence and didn't know how to handle such a sudden confession, took a few moments to process before responding in the only way he knew how: with a wisecrack. "Why would you want to go do something stupid like that?"

_"YOU'RE MISSING THE POINT!"_ she shrieked at him, her voice rising in pitch so quickly that soon only bats could hear it. Seeing Duncan wince at her rapid increase in volume, Courtney gathered herself to a certain degree and, fixing him with a steely glare, hissed, "Duncan, I—I hate you _so much_—so _ridiculously_ much—so much I can't even _breathe _right some days!"

With that, she gave the washing machine another kick (though not nearly as hard as before) and turned back to folding clothes as the contraption spluttered back to life, seemingly calmer after having gotten that off her chest.

Knowing her, Duncan suspected that little speech had been a long time coming. Either that or her vocab was even more impressive than he originally thought if she could whip out stuff like that on the spot.

He watched her for a few minutes as she resumed her attempt at ignoring him, though the adrenaline from her outburst had caught up with her and flushed her face beet red. Courtney, blushing harder at the possible implications of Duncan's newfound silence, tried stealing a few nervous glances at him through her hair but found him not staring at her, surprisingly, but instead staring out at their seemingly endless ocean of laundry, his face unreadable.

Finally, after what struck Courtney as _forever_, he grinned. "Well, Hell," he said at last, turning to face her. "Under _those_ terms, I think I pretty much hate you too."

The washing machine made a '_ding!_' like a microwave, and Courtney dove in to grab the sopping clothes to save herself from having to answer. As she did so, however, she was fighting a smile with every ounce of pride she had left in her (which, granted, wasn't all that much after what had happened in the last few days.)

"C'mon," Duncan said suddenly, pushing off the dryer. "Let's blow this popsicle stand." He indicated the door with a nod of his head, still grinning mischievously.

Courtney pulled her head back out of the washing machine, her expression utterly appalled. "What? Chef will _kill_ us!"

"Okay, _first,_ Chef probably isn't even on the island anymore," Duncan informed her, already picking his way out of the laundry room around the dozens of baskets. "You heard Chris, right, babe? It's _challenge_ day! And secondly, even if he _is_ still on the island, there's no way he can keep track of all nineteen of us. _C'mon_."

Courtney's eyes darted between the pile of wet clothes still in the washer (her fellow campers definitely weren't going to be _happy_ campers if they got their clothes back with mildew) and Duncan's hopping figure as he made his way to the door. "But what about—?"

"Fine then!" he cut her off, slipping out through the door with a smirk. "Enjoy your _laundry_!"

The smirk did it. "Ugh! _Duncan!"_ she called after him, pulling the mass of clothes out in a wad, cramming said wad into the dryer, and pushing as many buttons as possible before turning back around to try and figure out exactly where Duncan had stepped in order to manage getting out of the room without upsetting a single basket. _How someone can be such a… smart _imbecile_ is beyond me!_

A solid minute of impromptu hamper-scotch later, she made it to what she thought was an empty hallway. Certain that Duncan was already halfway gone to wherever he planned on going, Courtney muttered a few unpleasantries under her breath and was about to cut her losses to go back to finish her (_their!_) chores when she was unexpectedly scooped up and swung over said delinquent's shoulder. She shrieked immediately and began beating on his sunburn as he carried her off, where she figured it would hurt the most.

(It _really_ smarted.)

"_**Ow**_! Quit—_**ow**__! Crap_, Prince—_**OW! **_Will you cut that _out!_?"

"Put me _down_, you savage!" she yelled, the beating continuing.

Duncan rolled his eyes as he flinched again, but he decided to humor her, putting her down on her feet only to grab her by the wrist and continue dragging her in the original direction they were headed. "You know," Duncan said, breathing deeply to regulate the sting in his back, "it's really better for your case if I'm carrying you against your will, but hey! If you _really _want to get caught breaking the rules with me _voluntarily_ again, be my guest…"

Courtney shot him a disgusted look even as she allowed herself to be pulled. (Duncan considered the maneuver a success, nonetheless!) "Geez," Courtney said, sniffing the air. It smelled like a combination of detergent and something else unidentifiable. "Do you wash your hair with rat poison or something? The smell is _sickening. _Like someone took a dead cat and covered it with lilacs."

Smirking back at her over his shoulder, he led her towards one of the employee stairwells. "Who said anything about washing my hair?" he asked teasingly, an eyebrow raised.

Courtney responded in total revulsion. "That is _so gross_, Duncan!"

"It's the gel, baby. _Relax._" He winked at her, opening the stairwell door and holding it open for her. Courtney couldn't bring herself to appreciate the gesture, though; it seemed more like mockery than chivalry.

He wiggled his brow. "You _know_ it turns you on."

_It totally does, _a little voice in her head agreed.

_Shut up, libido!

* * *

_

Poor Courtney. When will she learn to stay away from Duncan's constant scheming? More importantly: does she really want to? Hmmm.

And now, some ridiculously long-winded notes from your two co-authors, which don't really contain important information but are hopefully entertaining anyway:

**From strayphoenix: **So, normally it would be tough to top the awesomeness that was Chapter 10. However, Chapter 10 was so jam packed with awesomeness that we actually had to divide it up into Chapters 10 AND 11 :)

So where is Duncan dragging Courtney off to? Nowhere she expects him to, that's for sure. He can be such a sneaky little con-artist when he wants to. :D And poor Courtney keeps on walking right into his plans because she keeps underestimating his ingenuity (not to mention his perseverance!) because there's no WAY Duncan could pull the same tricks on her twice.

Never underestimate the Mohawk, Courtney. The Mohawk doesn't underestimate you. ;)

Chapter 12 coming at you ASAP. This is only the calm before the storms…

**From Contemperina: **That's right, _storms_, pluralized! Because what kind of DxC story would this be if it was all glitter and unicorns? A pretty darn out-of-character one, I say. Unless Duncan was giving the glittery unicorn a noogy. But then, of course, the horn complicates things, and Duncan is forced to either get creative or ignore the unicorn entirely. And honestly, who can ignore a unicorn? But you see, this plot involving unicorns is a road less travelled _for a reason_. For now, we'll just stick to good old Playa De Losers fanfiction. Thus, _storms_. With an S on the end.

But, beyond all that, I hope you enjoyed this rather lengthy chapter and are looking forward to finding out where Duncan and Courtney are headed. Any guesses? Remember, Playa is a large place, and Duncan's already been exploring… ;)

Thanks for reading! Please review. (:


	12. Never fall further than you'll be caught

*peek heads around corner* Is it safe? You don't want to kill us, do you? … Fantastic! So, you may or may not have noticed that TAOP has fallen behind schedule—we would like to call this posting-gap our requisite summer hiatus. Everyone deserves one of those, right? Even authors. But hey, we're back, and to make up for the break, we've arranged an extra long chapter for you! I mean, really, look at that scroll bar. It's tiny. (Though part of it is the author's notes at the end. They're obscenely long this time around.)

In any case, go grab some lemonade (or iced tea. Your preference), get comfy, and prepare yourself for a chapter of epic proportions.

If you'll recall, when we left Duncan, he was dragging Courtney away from laundry duty and to an unknown location. And now, we learn his fate…

* * *

**Chapter 12: Never fall further than you'll be caught **

The very instant they'd made it through the roof access door, Courtney ripped her wrist out of Duncan's grip. She only just realized that she could have done it earlier as they were climbing the flights of stairs, but then again, she'd been too distracted complaining about how they weren't taking the elevator to realize that she was complying with him fully (damn that boy's smile!) and his grip on her wrist was entirely redundant.

Duncan just continued grinning, giving her back her arm. He'd brought them to the roof because he knew it was a great vantage point to spy on the other suckers doing their chores—prime entertainment. Also, while he knew Chris kept a few cameras around Playa in case something interesting happened (he happened to have one of said cameras in his bag, after all) he would have bet anything that their host hadn't wasted camera equipment on such a boring place as the roof.

Glancing around, he saw that while there _were_ a few cameras positioned along the sides of the roof's narrow edge, they were all pointing outwards toward the pool deck, the roof of the gym building, and a few courtyards. This offered them complete seclusion, which would have been a dream for any guy hoping for a PG-13 worthy make-out session. Incidentally, this happened to be _exactly_ what Geoff used the spot for.

But as he watched Courtney stomp over to the roof's edge with a huff, rubbing her wrist like she was breaking out in a rash from touching his diseased skin, he could tell that the first thing on _his_ mind was the _last_ thing on hers. And while the air was still hot and humid thanks to whatever it was Chris was doing to the environment (probably killing the ozone layer in the process. Malibu was _definitely_ not going to like that…), the strong, icy breeze that blew through them at their high vantage point was an annoying reminder that they were still in Canada, rather than in a Caribbean island resort as their host tried _way_ too hard to convince them.

It swept over Courtney, pushing the hair out of her face and back over her shoulders, lifting the bottom of her blouse and making it flap like a flag. She shivered slightly, pressing her legs together, and tightly crossed her arms over her chest against the cold (it also stopped the annoying flapping) as all her muscles tensed under the loose fabric of her shirt and capris.

Duncan, still standing in the doorway, found himself staring, saliva pooling in his mouth. Suddenly, he realized he would have given anything for her to just admit she _liked_ him already; spare him the trouble he was making for himself by chasing her in all the circles he was drawing out so they could just get down to the _better_ perks of a relationship.

Some days (if he were truly honest, _most _days), it felt like he was merely digging his own shallow, unmarked grave. But then again, if he was keeping up with the honesty, a quick zip to the finish was really the _last _thing he wanted.

If, perchance, by some rare _miracle,_ Courtney gave up all of a sudden and decided she wanted to have her wicked way with him right then and there on the concrete rooftop, Duncan would have felt kind of _cheated _(not to mention impossibly indebted to the universe for the rest of his life_._) He had already chucked such a great deal of his pride out the window in his efforts to get with her that anything less than total, absolute devotion wasn't going to be enough return for him. (Although, they'd _technically_ slept together as of the day before yesterday. The rungs of their relationship ladder were essentially upside-down and backwards, so he wasn't absolutely sure what was supposed to come next…)

It was impossible to pinpoint _when_ it had happened exactly—in retrospect, it kind of felt like it had always been _inevitable_, as cheesy as that sounded to Duncan's ego—but at some point among all the near death experiences and revolting challenges, teasing Courtney had stopped being a reflex and become more of an objective_. _

Sure, she was pretty cute (also soccer-mom hot if looked at the right way), but her mightier-than-thou attitude had been such a turn-off that at first, he'd legitimately thought he hated her. Hated what she _represented_.

After all, there was only so far he was willing to go for a pretty face, right? And yet he kept going further…and further… He'd pushed his limits so far in fact, that he doubted if he'd ever be able to revert back into the Duncan he'd been before Wawanakwa: the guy who didn't give two shits about anything at all, much less a simple _chick_.

Truth be told, Duncan had _never_ worked so hard to win over a girl his whole friggin life! His 'Bad Boy' image usually had him beating them off at the doors if anything else, and as soon as he got bored, it had them running for their lives when he whipped out a chainsaw or told them his fake juvy story of the week—which got progressively more fanciful and gruesome from girlfriend to girlfriend.

Frankly, coaxing Ms. "Excuse me, _I_ was a CIT!" out of her obvious denial (because it was oh so _painfully _obvious to everyone but her) was turning into the most fun he'd ever had without getting arrested.

Duncan pulled himself from that line of thought, coming to stand beside Courtney with a resigned sigh she completely missed. His brothers had teased him, warning him it was going to happen one day: a girl was going to stumble onto his radar out of the blue and spin him so many ways to oblivion he wasn't going to know his right foot from his left ear. And about that, strangely enough, he wasn't going to give a damn.

He'd snickered and laughed at them, calling them pussies for ever letting themselves get played by chicks like that because _he_ was going to be the exception to that pansy-ass rule. There was no _way _that was _ever_ going to happen to him.

Yet irony, as his fugging karma would have it, was a swift kick to the balls in the shape of a brunette not-quite-counselor with a short fuse, cute waist, and a fiery personality that could reduce the eastern coast of Canada to _cinders_ in mere seconds.

And Duncan, of course, was the designated match.

So_ no_, he thought to himself as he plopped down on the roof's brick ledge, now grinning smugly at her failed attempts to ignore him. He was going to see this through to the end. First, he was going to convince her of how much she would benefit from playing baseball. _Then_ he could start running the bases.

Courtney had been pretending to watch the other campers do their assigned chores, but she finally turned to Duncan with a glare, hoping to redirect his attention to something that _wasn't _her. (Geez, was this how he'd stared at her while she'd been sleeping? _Creeper._)

"_What,_" she demanded through her teeth, "are you _staring_ at?"

Not bothering to change his expression or even flick his eyes away for a second, Duncan responded lasciviously, "The _scenery_, baby. Just enjoying the _scenery_…"

Courtney blushed lightly at this and hoped he'd blame the color on the blustering wind. Untangling one of the arms she'd crossed over her chest, she deliberately pointed down to the pool deck without looking herself. "Scenery is _that_ way," she instructed, her tone clipped.

Sparing the direction to which she pointed a quick, uninterested glance, his grin widened. "Nothing out _there_ I'd rather be checking out. How about you?"

"You are _such_ a pig," was the CIT's reply as she retracted her arm back and rewrapped it around herself to stave off the cold, giving the delinquent beside her what she hoped was an equally frosty glare.

Duncan shrugged, getting comfortable. "You say toe-_may_-toe, I say poe-_tay_-toe."

Annoyance flickered to life through her like someone had cranked up the voltage on an electric storm, and she threw her hands up. "Then _why_ did you drag me all the way up here to have the same argument we could have had back on solid ground while we did something _productive_?"

The look of lust on Duncan's face slid away, settling into an equally natural looking expression of amusement (at Courtney's expense, of course). "Um, because while I'll admit to being _unbelievably _turned on by a woman doing housework, the way you say it kinda kills all the pizzazz. Makes it sound like an episode of _Leave it to Cleaver."_

"'_Beaver'_," Courtney corrected reflexively.

Attention deficiency kicking in, Duncan immediately glanced back over his shoulder to the ground below them and asked curiously, "_Really_? Where?"

Knowing a lost cause when she saw one (or rather, recognizing a stubborn stationary object when she'd tried to move it twenty times already and it wouldn't budge), Courtney bit back her reply and rolled her eyes, muttering something about the uselessness of the educational system. She turned her attention back down to the pool deck where Eva and Cody were attempting to organize the disaster that was the Tiki Bar after Harold and Duncan's ice hockey stunt while Beth was chatting up the handsome masterpiece that was Justin as they blow-dried the frozen pool surface.

Fighting the urge to shiver again and consequently give Duncan an opening to put his arm around her, or just to touch her in any way, shape, or form, Courtney quickly struck up an idle conversation on a different topic before he had enough time to think of his next opening jab.

"I still can't believe you jumped off a second floor balcony into two and a half meters of water without so much as a scratch…" she commented, shaking her head as she watched their "rink" slowly melt back into a pool. "I mean, did you even _look?_ At _all?_ What if you'd jumped and found it to be frozen like it is now?"

Her objective was achieved as Duncan looked away from her, over his shoulder at the pool beneath them. "Dunno," he replied simply. Then he turned back to face her, an expression that had **TROUBLE** written across his forehead in bold, capital letters, font size 300. "Why don't we find out!"

Courtney, without the slightest idea of what he planned on doing, watched in shock as Duncan quickly hopped up on the thin brick border that separated them from a long drop into the 2.5 meters of only _partially_ melted water (if he could even manage to _hit_ the water this time) and took a step right towards its edge.

"_Duncan_!" she screamed at him, suddenly frightened for his safety and hating it. "Get _down_ from there!"

"Check it out, Princess!" he proclaimed happily, extending his arms to the side in the shape of a T as another gust of wind swept over them. "I'm king of the _wooooorld!_"

"You are _not_ funny, Duncan! Nor are you original!" Courtney snapped, irritated and alarmed (and irritated _because _she was alarmed.) She stood on the tips of her toes and leant against the ledge with her knees, making a swipe for his arm and missing, her other palm pressed against the warm bricks for some extra reach. "Now get your ass _down from there _before one of us—!"

Looking back on it, the pair figured they should have known that Chris McLean only ever did _anything_ half-way.

The ledge didn't even make a warning sound before the poorly conceived ("Don't forget cheap!") masonry gave way under Courtney's additional applied force, suddenly leaving the CIT with nothing to support her peculiar position. Losing her balance as the bricks she'd been leaning against a second ago seemed to vanish, Courtney's mind blanched in panic as her stomach all but imploded, yielding a sensation like that of a black hole opening in her abdomen.

Her brain, at least, provided her with a quick enough reaction time to flail and grab at what was left of the ledge before the rest of her toppled off the roof with a surprised scream.

"_**AHHHHHHHHH!**_"

"_DID YOU HEAR STH-OMETHING?_" Beth yelled at Justin over the roar of the hairdryers, glancing around the pool between glances at the model beside her. "_LIKE A CAT HAVING IT-STH TAIL STH-TEPPED ON?" _

The male model barely glanced around before shrugging his shoulders and shaking his head "no". Deciding that he'd defrosted the pool enough for the time being, Justin smiled his 100 Grand smile and turned the hairdryer onto himself to dry the beads of sweat that had dripped from his brow.

At that moment, Beth completely forgot about her question. She also couldn't recall the directions for making her lungs accept oxygen.

"_**OH MY GOD**_!" Courtney shrieked, scrambling to maintain her single-handed grip on the ledge as the rest of her body hung precariously, four floors over the concrete pool deck.

Startled by her shriek (the sudden lack of Courtney's biting wit was surprising enough without the additional volume), Duncan quickly hopped off the ledge and made to grab Courtney's arm in alarm. "Woah! Need a hand th—?"

"Don't touch me!" she snapped in a high pitch, trying her hardest not to look down (and failing) as she swung up her other hand, managing a second grip on the disintegrating ledge. "I—_oof!—_can handle this!"

Duncan had frozen at her command, his arms just centimeters away from grabbing hers, and was staring at her as one would stare at Izzy-level "Let's play hot potato with highly unstable explosives!" insanity.

"…You've _got_ to be kidding me," he stated after a moment.

"Like—_agh!—_heck I am!" Courtney managed as she pulled herself up, enough so that at least one of her arms was completely over the border past the elbow and therefore able to grab its far end. In this new position, she found that she could speak and glare at Duncan, who had taken a small step back, more comfortably (though 'comfortably' was a heavy understatement.) "Whatever you—_ugh!_—do, you'll just _jinx_ it!"

She made to shift her weight so she could steady her foot on something and push herself back up, meanwhile trying to force her mind over the fact that her heart was still hammering full-blooded in her ears. (She was going to have to train herself to better override her instinctual reactions. This was just _embarrassing._) Blindly searching, however, her foot couldn't find anything close enough to be used as a stepping stool.

Duncan peered over the wall, looking her over once as she dangled there, trying to figure out a way to get herself back up without his help. He was concerned for both her physical and mental stability as he was _pretty_ sure that there was a line drawn somewhere between 'Proud' and _'Insane'_, but then again, he was also pretty positive that Courtney had long since left said line solemnly waving goodbye to her about a hundred kilometers back.

So quickly that Courtney almost missed it, the corner of Duncan's mouth flickered into a smirk before he forced his face into an expression of nonchalance. "Whatever you say, babe," he ceded. And with that, he dropped into a cross-legged sitting position, his back resting against the ledge ever so lightly, and pulled out his pocket knife, beginning to sharpen it against the bricks Courtney was still hanging off.

Too busy trying to get back on solid ground, she saved the brutal verbal lashing she was going to unleash on Duncan's useless, egocentric hide for later. Taking in a deep breath through her gritted teeth (her heart was still going at least 500 kilometers an hour), Courtney took the chance and checked how _bad_ her situation was, nervously glancing down over her shoulder. Granted, Courtney wasn't all that scared of heights, but being stuck in the position she found herself in made it _very_ difficult not to associate the altitude with a sudden, splattering death.

Luckily for her, there was a balcony a few meters below her that, if all went well (depending on your definition of _well_), wouldn't create any completely debilitating injuries. Unfortunately, it wouldn't be all that fluffy to land on, either. Especially not in the shoes she was wearing. And yet, that was the only option Courtney could see.

She tried again to pull herself up using brute tricep strength, but to no avail. The one arm she had swung over the border made it hard for her to breathe, harder for her other arm to swing over to match it, and hardest of all for her to see past the stars that had begun blinking across her vision due to the oxygen deficiency. And maybe she was merely paranoid and still a little shell-shocked, but she was pretty sure the bricks she clung to were starting to make very _non-stable_ brick sounds…

"Still hanging tight, honey?" Duncan asked from the other side of the ledge. Courtney could only see his Mohawk from where she hung, but the smirk in his voice was perfectly audible, even over the hum of the hairdryers below them.

"Shut up and make yourself—_ngh!_—useful by pulling me back up…" she grumbled, adjusting her grip on the ledge.

Duncan flipped over from where he sat, crossing his arms over the top of the barrier so Courtney could see his face and inquired, "Are you _super_ sure, Sweetheart?" He planted his chin on his arms and grinned, lightly bumping her one elbow with his. "I wouldn't want to _jinx_ you or anything."

"Sometime this—_ugh!—_century, Duncan!" she barked. She hoped it masked the slight panic in her voice as one of her arms (incidentally, the same one with the probably-sprained wrist) started to lose all feeling.

Courtney saw him roll his teal eyes and heard him snicker, followed by a sigh (that sounded suspiciously like "ungrateful") as he got back on his feet, reaching over the crumbling ledge to grab her by the arms and lift her back over to his side of the roof.

But someone in this whole mess (either Duncan's ego, Courtney's pride, or Chris's architects) must have miscalculated because in the same moment that Duncan thought he had a hold of Courtney, and Courtney was _just_ beginning to trust that Duncan wasn't going to drop her for laughs, another brick came loose—an essential brick. Courtney lost her entire grip on the ledge in a matter of milliseconds, which Duncan wasn't prepared for, and the CIT's full dead weight would have sent them both over the edge if not for the push-ups Duncan performed religiously every morning, evening, and the occasional afternoon.

Courtney dug her nails ("_claws", _Duncan would later argue) into Duncan's shoulders through the fabric of his shirt and half-screamed again before she could stop herself. Right in Duncan's ear, too. "_**HOLY—!"**_

"You know," Justin thought aloud in a rare moment of verbal communication, looking gorgeously confused as he dried his hair, "I think I _did_ hear something just now…"

"_I DIDN'T HEAR ANYTHING!_" Beth replied immediately over the roar of her own hairdryer, swooning with a huge grin and breathing irregularly (it would appear she was in danger of an asthma attack) as the air blew back Justin's delicious, dark hair. She was oblivious to the fact that her own hairdryer was dangerously close to the aquatic surface of the pool. Beth would have died the happiest girl on the planet, regardless.

Four floors above them, Duncan speedily compensated for the new unbalance between them, struggling to get a more solid grip on Courtney, and, grunting from the effort and the unfamiliar strain on his back (even push-ups couldn't have ameliorated that), he managed to pull her back onto the solid surface of the roof as a few more bricks dislodged themselves from the extremely unsafe border.

(Unfortunately, Trent happened to be passing underneath them just then on his way to ask Eva if she could help him move some of the gym equipment, so he could complete his task of vacuuming. These bricks dropped on his head, knocking the musician unconscious. Again.)

Once they were both on solid ground, Duncan and Courtney collapsed back onto the roof, side by side, panting heavily and—though they'd never admit it, even to themselves—thoroughly _freaked_ by the experience. They sat up mere centimeters apart and stayed like that for a few moments without looking at the other, save for the one quick worried glance to make sure the other was still in one piece.

Duncan was rubbing at his damaged eardrum, allowing himself a small smile for being the hero, as Courtney massaged her aching wrist and tried to grasp the fact that all her appendages were still in place. Their backs facing the ledge and their shoulders barely touching, the two sat quietly in peace, breathing steadily.

Then, Courtney pulled her hand back and slapped Duncan's sunburn, _hard _as she could.

The delinquent winced something terrible, his whole back arching away from the blow as he sucked in air through his teeth, his face contorted in pain. After exhaling a quick string of profanities, he breathed deeply and turned to Courtney, glaring his fiercest, most menacing, kill-you-where-you-sit glare. "_What_…was _**that**_ for?"

But Courtney barely blinked, too riled up by her own righteous fury to notice the extent of his. "For nearly _killing_ me!" she yelled, her hands balling to fists at her sides.

"Okay, _I_ just saved your ungrateful heiny, Princess!" Duncan clarified as he rubbed his tender back. "_Which_," he added testily, "by the_ way_, does _not_ weigh the 53 kilos you claim it does—"

"Yeah, well, hit the bench some more, bucko!" she snapped in response. "You almost _dropped_ me!"

"But I didn't, 'kay? And the fall wouldn't have _killed_ you. _Per se_…" He let the thought trail off ominously as he tried to ignore the new burning pain in the square of his back, a place where he knew he was going to find a handprint in the morning. Or in the next ten minutes. Holy Tostitos, how much spinach was that girl getting in her diet?

"Geez, Duncan! Could you be _more_ of a klutz?" Courtney spat, turning her face from him to glare angrily at the stairwell door like it was the one at fault instead of the boy next to her.

"_Yeah_," Duncan quipped, ripping his glare away from her as well. "I could be _Tyler._"

Not deeming the jibe worth a response, Courtney hissed like a snake and clenched her teeth as the two ended up sitting in charged silence once more, staring off angrily into their own respective corners of the universe. The beginnings of a fight broke out somewhere behind and below them (involving a voice that was almost certainly Eva's), but neither of them had any intention of going to check what it was.

After a few more moments, in a voice barely heard over the earsplitting argument (that had managed to escalate into a screaming match) and the roaring hairdryers below them, Courtney took a chip off her pride and muttered a quick and emotionless, "Thanks."

It was low enough that Duncan could have pretended he hadn't heard it. Instead, he calmly informed her, "I saved your life, and then you hit me. I'm gonna need more consolation than that, darling."

Still not looking at him, Courtney grudgingly took the chisel back to her ego. "…_Thank you_, Duncan," she said a little louder, her voice still tight.

The corner of his lips flared up in a smirk, since he knew how much it cost her to get that sentiment past her (still gritted) teeth, though she didn't see this. Seeing an opportunity to push in his favor, he went on. "I didn't mean in _words_, Princess."

"Ha ha. _No," _she deadpanned immediately.

"Not even a—?"

"You're not _that_ good-looking, Romeo," Courtney interrupted, her cheeks flushing slightly, though Duncan missed it.

Duncan grinned a little wider, turning just enough to glance at her out of the corner of his eye. "But I _am_ good looking?" he teased, capitalizing on her slip of tongue.

In another situation, Courtney might have had time to flare up at his words and begin her endless string of denials. As it was, the adrenaline still circulating through her body, left over from the _closest_ of her close calls, sprung into action so an answer flowed past her lips before her brain could check it for any hints of fear, nervousness, dependence, or respect and eliminate them all completely.

"You make my eyes bleed less than looking at Chef in his transgendered outfits," she replied simply, her tone matter-of-fact as she forced herself to keep looking away.

In the aforementioned "other situation," Duncan might have continued teasing her to provoke her into admitting she liked him more than she pretended. But since her comment sounded, _amazingly_, a lot like a half-baked confession already, he decided to count his blessings (and wait until his back stopped hurting like a mother before provoking her to the point of abuse again.)

"…Well, all right, then," was his response after a moment. He settled back down and left the conversation at that, content with its simple, and thankfully not lethal (for _either_ party), conclusion.

They lapsed back into neutral silence to the sound of hairdryers and death threats from below, a Canadian wind from the freezing pole dancing across the roof of their beach building. Neither of them yelled. No one teased. They were just _sitting_ there—within a mere half meter of each other—and it didn't feel like the starting battle to a Total Drama War.

And it was totally freaking the hell out of Duncan.

"_Soooo_…" he began, trailing the word awkwardly as he drummed his fingers on his knee, choosing his words from between what his pride thought was _acceptable _and what he truthfully _wanted_ to say."You missed out on some crazy stuff after you were voted off the island," the delinquent compromised at last. _I wish you could have been there with me._

Courtney scoffed lightly, but there was no real breath to it, no true haughtiness. "By the looks of what made it to TV, I didn't miss all that much," she answered, stealing a glance at him. _I was honestly worried you were going to get yourself kicked off for something stupid _was what she wanted to say.

Duncan stole the glance she'd stolen like the delinquent he was, and, meeting her eyes, he grinned. "Yeah, well, they cut out all the stuff that _doesn't_ make us look like complete retards on international TV." _You should've seen all the confession tapes I had to smash because I rambled on about you too long._

Courtney rolled her eyes away from his (mostly for show) and bit her lip. What did _he_ care how he came out in TV? When did he ever care about _anything_? Heck, she'd never known him _not_ to take a chance to prove he didn't care, which often resulted in him demonstrating that he was the best at whatever ridiculousness he was attempting.

Destroying Harold's self-worth? Check. Flirting with everything that didn't have something hanging between its legs—_especially _her? Yuck and check. Climbing more than halfway up the tallest tree on the island on a dare, just to carve a skull and prove he could do it? Checkeroo. Never in the entire time she'd known him had Duncan tried to wheedle out of a challenge. Never had he turned down a chance to prove he was a fearless, shameless bastard.

But even as she thought it, resting her chin on her knee, a single exception came to mind, making her mind prick up immediately.

"Hey, Duncan?" she hedged, turning to look at him.

"That's my name, don't wear it out," he replied cheekily, grinning still.

Her head cocked a solid forty-five degrees to the side, Courtney's eyes suddenly filled with honest curiosity. "Why didn't you answer the question last night? About going to juvy?"

Duncan's relaxed posture tensed, though not in a way that was particularly apparent to anyone observing him as Courtney was. The sudden falter in his smile was the far more obvious, and completely unexpected, warning sign.

In the span of two seconds (because that was generally the amount of time it took Duncan to make any sort of decision), the delinquent briefly considered telling her one of his fabricated stories to keep her curiosity at bay but then reminded himself that he didn't _want _to scare the life out of this girl. Yet telling her the _truth, _on the other hand, when she couldn't even handle his small slip of character when it came to DJ's pet _vermin,_ for heaven's sake, was out of the question.

After all, only three other people in Muskoka knew the answer to the question she asked, and even while something inside him wanted to let her in on the truth, that was already three people far too many. And one person in particular of those three had been handed a healthy round of ammunition to use against him if she ever chose to take that route.

So, as per usual, Duncan took the 'duck and haul ass_' _strategy to save his pride instead. It had been working well for him so far.

"Because really, it's none of anyone's _damn business,_" he answered with a brief scowl, his voice uncharacteristically clipped (for talking to Courtney anyway—otherwise, it was usually more clipped than not.) It was a reflexive response for him, like blocking a punch, and the moment the two were having disappeared into the cold Canadian wind as Duncan pushed back onto his feet and headed for the stairs, hands shoved deep into his pockets.

Surprised by his sudden hostility but trying not to show it, Courtney hurriedly got up as well (though her legs still felt as wobbly and jiggly as Chef's mystery meatloaf) and made to follow him. "Oh, _come on,_ Duncan," she shot at him, slipping back into her comfort zone—being annoyed with him. "Don't be such a drama queen; it was just an innocent question."

He stopped walking and turned back to her, looking only peeved now—he'd realized just after the fact that he'd let too much slip with the scowl and adjusted his expression accordingly—as he crossed his arms over his chest. "Um, yeah, a question I already told everyone I wasn't _answering, _Princess."

Courtney opened her mouth to continue arguing over the quizzical issue (what on Earth could he be _hiding?_), but a voice that belonged to neither of them interrupted her with, "Oy! Is that you, Duncan, eh?"

The pair glanced down below them for the first time since they'd arrived on the roof. Ezekiel stood below them, looking to be about 90% toque from their vantage point, grinning up at them and waving. Just behind him, Beth had abandoned her hairdryer and was flapping Justin's shirt at an unconscious Trent, as the _generous_ male model took the opportunity to pose and catch some sun. Eva admired him from behind the Tiki Bar, still holding a nervous and struggling Cody by the front of his collar with one hand.

"_**What**__?_" Courtney and Duncan shouted at the same time. In the exact same tone of voice, with the exact same emphasis. Such precision couldn't have been found in a nationally-acclaimed choral.

"_I'm _Duncan," the actual Duncan corrected, condemning thoughts of his trip to juvy to the furthermost corners of his mind and grinning playfully at Courtney, who blushed and narrowed her eyes. Taking the opportunity to steer the girl's focus to something besides him (wow, never thought he'd be doing _that_), he turned to the prairie boy smugly. "What's happenin', Zeke?"

Ezekiel sighed in relief. He had been looking for Duncan _everywhere _and had started to worry that he'd never find the delinquent on their large (albeit completely isolated) island resort.

"I had a question I really wanted to ask you, homie," he started, proud of himself for remembering the right terminology. "You said I coo'ld ask yoo about anything I was confused aboo't if yoo weren't busy with anything else, right, eh?" he confirmed.

Wracking his brain but unable to think of anything he'd witnessed or caused in the last couple days on Playa that wasn't self-explanatory, Duncan shrugged and stepped closer to the ledge. "Sure, man. Fire away," he said confidently. But he was totally unprepared for Ezekiel's question:

"Is it normal to knife with oo'ther girls even when yoo already have a girlfriend, eh?"

"Knife with…_huh_?" Duncan replied, hiking an eyebrow in confusion as Ezekiel grinned with the endearing naivety that only a homeschooler could possess.

But suddenly, Duncan felt a sinking feeling in his gut, like someone had dropped an anchor down his throat. There _was_ one thing that sprung to mind that the boy could have been implying, but…there was no _way_ that had aired yet.

"What are you talking about, you weirdo?" Courtney demanded, stepping up to the dilapidated roof border (though with far more reluctance than Duncan had) and planting her hands on her hips in her '_Counselor Means Business' _posture.

Ezekiel continued explaining to Duncan casually, oblivious to the swaying sentiments of the two teenagers far above him. "I was helping oo't the guys who were putting too'gether the last episode with Lindsay, and I saw yoo and Heather getting coo'sy, eh? I asked ar'oond to everyone else since I couldn't find yoo, but they joo'st sort of laughed at me."

Courtney and Duncan stared at him for a second without reacting, processing his words. But as the gears in their heads grinded to their respective halts, Duncan's eyes narrowed at Ezekiel (he was trying not to launch into a _complete_ panic—his insides were still attempting to digest that anchor) as Courtney's features twisted up into a murderous expression.

"You. Asked. _EVERYONE_?" she yelled down to the startled boy.

Their eyes immediately darted back to the other campers on the pool deck, who had taken note of Courtney's sudden increase in volume. Noticing the couple's attention on them, Beth and Cody looked away sharply to avoid getting caught staring, but Beth was unable to suppress a small giggle. Eva did the opposite, fixing Duncan with her signature glare of death as if the boy had done her personal harm by snuggling with her arch nemesis. Justin peeked an eye open from where he was sunning and gave Duncan a wink and a double thumbs up.

Ezekiel's story confirmed, Courtney spun back to fix Duncan with such an infuriated glare of _utmost_ contempt that Duncan couldn't help but cringe at the ferocity. His mind must have been playing tricks on him, because he could almost tangibly _feel_ himself being dropped off back at square one. Or maybe that was still the anchor…

Casting one more equally livid glare down at Ezekiel, the CIT stomped a bee-line towards the visitor stairwell, entertaining every possible way she was going to kill—kill the _universe_ for its involvement in messing with her life! But, since she was logical and knew that would never work, she would merely have to settle for making Ezekiel _eat_ his toque.

It took Duncan a moment to compose himself and assess the damage made to his already dysfunctional relationship with Courtney as said girl stalked away from him. Realizing that his status had dropped from "_Maybe, Kinda, Sorta Heading Somewhere Better_" to "_Far Less Than Acceptable_" (more like "_Kiss Your Chances Goodbye, Jerk"_), he slowly turned back to the pool deck, primed for a slaughter of epic proportions as he glared down at his next stabbing victim.

But Duncan's next stabbing victim was looking off to where Courtney had disappeared, shrouded in total confusion. Upon looking back into Duncan's steely ice blue eyes, however, Ezekiel realized the danger he was in and, after a moment of remembering how to use his legs, the boy ran off fast as he could.

In the same breadth of a second, Duncan shot off sprinting for the staff stairs, hoping to get down to Zeke faster than Courtney so he could carve him, personally.

He threw the door open with an animalistic battle cry of, "_GET __**BACK**__ HERE, YOU HOMESCHOOLED HOME WRECKER!_"

He'd made it down two and a half floors before the door even found the chance to click back into place.

* * *

Please take a second to sit back and absorb what just happened. Okay, moving on!

And now, some ridiculously long-winded notes from your two co-authors, one of which is even _more_ ridiculously long-winded than usual for reasons you'll see in approximately two seconds.

**From Contemperina: **Hello, all! I'd like to point out that it feels a bit funny giving my author's note first. But, there is a reason for this madness. You see, way back when **stray** and I were plotting out this chapter, I said (for I believe it was my idea. It's all running together, though) "Hey, how cool would it be if Courtney fell off the roof and didn't want Duncan to save her?" and **stray** said (this is a complete abomination, by the way. She said this much more eloquently) "That would be so great! I'll write that part." So she got to work, but not far into the process, she discovered that falling off a roof is not quite as easy as you'd think. So, she created an experiment. I later asked for a summary of the process, and because I enjoyed it so much, we're now bringing it to you.

But, to wrap it up and get on to the real show, I hope you enjoyed the chapter! It's one of my favorites so far. Oh, and please share you thoughts on stray's experiment! I'm actually quite curious to hear what you all think of it. (: Because I was very impressed.

**From** **strayphoenix: **So this chapter comes at you with a bit more delay than usual for several reasons:

1. It is quite long, one of the longest chapters we have clocked. Lot to say, lots of great ways to say it :)  
2. I was traveling for the summer so less time to write if I intended to enjoy vacation. I know, I know. I would have taken the writing time too :P  
3. Because I couldn't quite figure out how to manage writing the rooftop scene, I had to hire my brother to help me reenact it to get the feel of it. No worries, though. No one was harmed in the writing of this chapter. Actually, someone came out richer. **Rina** wanted me to transcribe it since apparently my dedication is hard to believe :P

(My brother, Slayer, is sitting doing work when I walk in the room.)  
Me: Hey Slayer. How's it going? Need any help?  
Slayer: *drops his head, groans, and whimpers* Is it going to hurt?  
Me: *confused* What?  
Slayer: Whatever it is you're going to use me to test. Is it going to be painful?  
Me: *confident* Totally pain-free!  
Slayer: Is it going to take long? I have things to finish.  
Me: I'll pay you...?  
Slayer: *looks me over then gets up with a sigh* You're SO lucky I'm broke.

(I lead him to my backyard where I have 8 plastic cube-shaped milk crates stacked four across and two on top of each other)  
Slayer: Fence?  
Me: Roof ledge. I need to figure out a way to realistically fall off it and stay in character.  
Slayer: Which character?  
Me: Well, I'm Courtney and you're Duncan from Total Drama Island/Action/World Tour. It's for that co-op fic I told you about.  
Slayer: ...You're such a nerd.  
Me: *grins (it's a compliment from him)* Thank you. Now hop on up, cowboy.

(Slayer jumps up as I stay on the ground and we try out a few scenarios. The crates are stackable but not tied together so we both fall off them a few times when they tip over)  
Slayer: This is NOTHING like a real roof, stray! It's totally unstable and it's never going to support the two of us standing up here.  
Me: *struck with inspiration* Perfect!  
Slayer: WHAT?  
Me: *having solved that problem, moving forward* Okay, so if the border gives way as I reach up for you *demonstrates* I technically have this hand supporting myself so I can grab the ledge to keep myself from falling over *tries to demonstrate but said crate falls over* Awesome!

(I instruct Slayer to hop off and begin picking up my crates)  
Me: Well, that part's solved. Onto experiment 2!  
Slayer: *surprised and annoyed* There's an experiment TWO?  
Me: *already ahead* Do you want your money or not?

(I take Slayer to a low bookshelf in my house that is about the same width but a little taller than the ledge I imagined and sturdier than the crates)  
Slayer: *irked* NOW what?  
Me: *getting behind the bookshelf, narrating* Okay, so I've fallen off the roof because the crates gave way but I managed to  
hang on with one hand *demonstrates* then both, because there's no way either of us has enough arm strength in one hand to support our whole bodies *puts other hand on ledge, thinking* though I could probably get one arm over *demonstrates, gets a little stuck and can't comfortably put other arm over*  
Slayer: *impatient* Well, what do you need ME for?  
Me: Well...how would you pull me up?

(Slayer demonstrates how he would grab me by the arms to pull me up. I take mental notes)  
Slayer: There. Can I go now? Or is there an experiment 3?  
Me: *teasing/just being evil* Weeelll...now that you mention it, do you know how to play ice hockey?

* * *

Thanks for reading! Please review. (:


	13. Never take it at face value

Hello again, and happy summer! There isn't much to say at this point, so go ahead and hunker down and prepare for: a dramatic monologue, a haphazard analogy, and a guest POV, the last of which starts in 3…2…

Oh. Wait.

If you'll recall, when we left Duncan, he was racing to kill Ezekiel for letting Courtney in on the "Heather thing". And now, we learn his fate…

* * *

**Rule 13: Never take it at face value **

Ezekiel was, once again, confused.

He wasn't quite sure how to describe his particular brand of confusion, but staring up at the hotel room and, past that, the enraged silhouettes of Duncan and Courtney, he felt safe in saying that he was almost constantly_ some_ degree of confused. This often was accompanied by some degree of mortal peril, his current situation being an excellent example, and it had all started—and never stopped—soon after his first step into the world of pop culture: the "real world", as everyone said. (Excluding his parents. They refused to acknowledge the fact that there was anything worth living for outside the family's small dairy farm. Their cows certainly seemed real enough…)

Unfortunately, Ezekiel seemed alone in feeling this confusion, this "What do I do? How do I act?" mindset. Lindsay was habitually confused, but it was in more of a "Wait, two plus two equals four? Since when?" sort of way. Katie and Sadie bickered and could never decide on what kind of smoothie to order, but that didn't compare either. When Leshawna had first arrived at the resort, she'd been confused, but she got over that pretty quickly, Ezekiel thought.

No. Ezekiel's confusion was one all his own, and it certainly wasn't going away. It continued to come and go in spurts, results of actions and reactions. But, he really _was _getting better at the whole "being normal" thing as of late—or so he'd thought before. He'd thought getting tutoring from Duncan, who _always_ seemed to know what to do ("_Nothing_ always works for me") and how to do it ("As _badly_ as possible, man. Then they won't ask you to do it again") was helping him. He was forced to change his mind, however, after seeing the murderous glint in Courtney's eyes and the steely glare in Duncan's.

This was where his great dilemma lay. He genuinely _didn't_ understand why asking about knifing made the world's most violent pair violent-er (after all, knifing was a major "count", or something like that!) So, as the more feminine of the two disappeared from the edge of the railing and charged towards what he knew were the stairs, Ezekiel's ever-present confusion returned to him like metal to a magnet. And, along with this feeling—an added bonus, he supposed—came a single message, blaring in his head like a siren, over and over: hide or die—die _twice! Painfully._

Accompanied by the thunderous noise of two pairs of legs charging down two sets of stairs, their owners undoubtedly primed for murder, Ezekiel's fight or flight instincts kicked in. Obviously unprepared for a fight against two people who were quite possibly the scariest teenagers he'd ever come into contact with (no, scratch that. Eva was scarier), he anxiously spun himself around, his head snapping side to side, scanning the tropical plants and lounge chairs for anything that had even _half_ a chance of protecting him from Duncan and Courtney's combined wrath.

After twenty or so seconds of frantic running around and unsuccessful attempts at squeezing behind leafy decorative plants approximately fifteen centimeters in diameter, Ezekiel found himself in one of the many off-to-the-side decorative courtyards that seemed to fill every and all of the resort's vacant nooks and unfilled crannies. Stumbling out into the blinding (not to mention terrifying) white openness, his gray eyes locked onto a deserted, yellow food cart, the bottom shelf conveniently hidden by a white drape. Knowing that his time was running short (it didn't take all that long to charge down a couple flights of stairs), he made a toque-first dive at the cart, managing to squeeze himself entirely under the sheet only by curling himself into the tightest fetal position imaginable.

Even so, his head was pressed against the top of the thing, and his back was rounding over further than it ever had been meant to, pressing his knees to his chest. Twisting around in an attempt at finding some sort of comfort and failing miserably, Ezekiel grimaced at this poor choice in hiding spots.

Then again, perhaps that wasn't the worst part. He hadn't expected the white sheet to be hiding several pots of buffet leftovers from view, which had been displaced during his dive and sent rolling around on the concrete conspicuously. As Ezekiel watched wide-eyed, a pot of pasta salad collided with a plate of neglected shrimp kabobs, producing a loud _clink! _Zeke winced at the noise, hoping that Duncan's blind rage might also be deaf. Preferably swift and painless too.

_Maybe_, he thought, pulling the cart's sheet aside just a tad, there was time for him to run to the pool and ask Justin to protect him. Justin was usually nice and helpful when he wasn't busy admir—

_BANG!_

…Too late.

A thick metal door, which Ezekiel honestly couldn't recall ever noticing before, flung open to reveal a furious Duncan, breathing heavily through his nostrils and, in Ezekiel's animal-savvy opinion, looking extremely similar to his family bull, Boris, after a charge at a haystack—especially with that piercing in his nose.

Courtney, on the other hand, was nowhere to be seen, though the inimitable shouts of, "WHERE ARE YOU, YOU BESOTTED SACK OF CORN-FED FROTH!?" implied that she wasn't yet prepared to abandon the search.

_BANG!_

The gigantic, industrial-sized door slammed into its frame just as Ezekiel forced his head back into the cart and yanked the curtain closed, his breathing all but stopped completely. Still curled into a defensive ball, he pulled his toque down further over his ears, as if it would somehow provide him extra protection when Duncan figured out where he'd stashed himself, overturned the cart, stabbed Ezekiel several times with his pocketknife, and then did an Irish River Dance on his exposed entrails.

Besides oft being confused, Ezekiel was also prone to tragedized panic.

"Where are you, you little punk!?" Duncan roared, stalking around the area he'd just stumbled out into: a small, concrete courtyard, separated from the pool deck by a flimsy-but-decorative wooden fence. The high afternoon sun reflected off the startlingly white walls, forcing Duncan's eyes into an uncomfortable squint. Temporarily blinded, he kicked several potted plants to the ground, reveling in the unmistakable _crash!_ of shattering ceramics and stomping on the mess of dirt for good measure. None of the fallen palms revealed his target, however, which only stoked his already-flaring temper.

Lips quickly curling into a snarl, he broke into a violent (and slightly unprecedented) tirade on his surroundings, flipping chairs and throwing flowerpots at the offensively neat white walls. It all went on for a really long while, Ezekiel thought—though in reality, it was only a minute, tops. Duncan didn't have all that much pent up anger and whatever he _did _have, he'd been saving the bulk of for the halter-top wearing devil woman he'd abandoned on Wawanakwa.

Ezekiel sat there the entire time, trying to steady his breaths, yet that only made him more uncomfortable; every hot breath expelled just settled back onto his face, trapped by the very sheet that was distancing him from death by delinquent.

"God, where are you?" Duncan muttered, nearing the end of his fit. Still clueless but looking for something more to take out his frustration on, he walked over the food cart, eyeing it as if it had done him some grave personal wrong.

At was at this moment that Ezekiel realized: he was going to die. He could tell that Duncan was headed over because he could see his Mohawked shadow approaching, and his enemy's footsteps were barely audible over the furious beating of his heart. Any second then, Ezekiel knew, Duncan would figure it out, pull the meager curtain aside, and expose him for the home-breaker that he apparently was (even though his mother was always telling him what a great job he did in cleaning up after himself in his own house. Not good enough, it seemed.)

"Ugh, _screw you, _Ezekiel!" Duncan yelled suddenly, proclaiming it for all Playa to hear. Grabbing onto the handle of the fragile yellow cart, he threw his entire body weight at it, running with it until it rammed into the brick wall ahead at no less than thirty kilometers an hour.

Ezekiel, of course, was still squished inside, and naturally, he was overtaken completely with both exhilaration and pure terror. Hurtling towards a concrete wall without warning of any kind, he only _just _managed to hold in a scream (or perhaps he didn't hold it in. Looking back, he wasn't quite sure.) Upon collision, the food cart absorbed most of the impact, but Ezekiel, clinging onto his toque as if it were the last solid thing on Earth, rolled straight into the wall, tumbling over with the entire cart a moment later.

Lying on the concrete, the curtain falling in his eyes, he was fairly sure he heard Duncan stomping away, muttering something about finding that "sun of a glitch", whatever _that_ was. But, wizened from years of moose-hunting, Ezekiel didn't dare move, just in case it was all a trick to lure him out of hiding. In fact, Ezekiel didn't move for quite some time, instead opting to wait in the safety of his yellow food cart with the nice, white curtains.

After all, that was what you were supposed to do when you possibly had a concussion, eh?

* * *

Bridgette always had to choose her words carefully around Courtney. Total Drama Island, she mused, was a lot like surfing—your option was to either (1) figure out how to flow with the tumulus currents around you, or (2) sink like a rock to the bottom of it all—so, Bridgette understood Courtney (a _Grade A_ tumulus current) far more thoroughly than she would have under any other circumstances.

She understood that even if Courtney was in a very good mood, it only took the tiniest thing to set her off. She understood that if such a tiny thing set Courtney off, she would overreact to just about anything. And perhaps most importantly of all, Bridgette understood that when Courtney was in the process of overreacting to just about anything, it was very difficult to reason with her. _Very_.

"I mean, _I _personally couldn't care _less_ if Ezekiel of all people feels the need to start spreading ridiculous, unfounded rumors about _Duncan_ and _Heather_," Courtney was ranting from where she sat on a dragged-off-to-the-side pool chair, not reclining like her friend but sitting on its edge with her sandals planted firmly against the grass. "Why he thinks _I _would care, however, is completely…completely…_ugh_, what's the word I'm looking for?"

"Outrageous?" Bridgette offered, leisurely leaning her lawn chair further back.

"Preposterous!" Courtney agreed, tossing her hands up. "Like I would stoop so low as to actually _care _who and what that jerk-off _does_ in his spare time! What, does that homeschooled hayseed think in his discombobulated brain that Duncan and I are some sort of… of _couple_ or something? I mean," she rushed to add, "I _obviously_ don't care what _Ezekiel _thinks. Because we're _not _a couple! Not now, nor will we _ever _be! Not even close._" _

Luckily for the girls' friendship, Bridgette was in possession of nearly unsurpassable amounts of patience.

"I'm pretty sure everyone here understands that you two aren't a couple," she replied calmly, peeling off her hoodie in an attempt to soak up some rays from the bright afternoon sun. Duncan and Courtney made it clear that they weren't a couple all right, she thought, chuckling to herself—clear as the _ocean_, which wasn't always all too clear…

"Except Ezekiel!" Courtney contradicted. "He _evidently_ hasn't gotten the picture."

"Right," Bridgette replied with a slight smile, leaning over to toss the sweatshirt under her own chair as she reclined in her baby blue tube top. "Except Zeke."

Courtney, not needing any more prompting than that, continued on. "And _then, _because wallowing in his own stupidity apparently _wasn't_ enough company, he decides it's a great idea to go around telling everyone what he saw in the cutting room! Why on _Earth_ would someone think that's a good plan?"

Bridgette turned her head to the left, pushed back her sunglasses to headband position, and regarded Courtney, shrugging slightly. "If you want my guess, it's the homeschooling," she pointed out wryly.

Courtney rolled her eyes, dramatically throwing herself back onto her own chair beside the blonde's. Bridgette watched her for a moment, and after a second or two of nothing more than determined glaring in the direction of the pool and a few mutterings of "retardation", "_kill_ him", and "_not_ a couple", the surfer figured it was safe to turn her head back to the sky and relax into the sun's rays.

Courtney, far less mellow, gazed around, trying to preoccupy herself. Looking out to the pool, she saw that nearly everyone had arrived; word had gotten out that it was a challenge day, which in turn meant it was an elimination day, and on such days, Chris required that poolsides were held in the afternoon. Something about getting the footage early and in good lighting so that the campers could then stay up late into the evening waiting for the Boat of Losers (which arrived _later_ some evenings than others.) It was all just a nuisance, really. Courtney doubted that any footage of Playa De Losers would _actually_ make it to the small screen. Maybe the DVD bonus features, but who—besides obsessive fanatics—ever watched those?

With a frustrated sigh, she took stock of the people in the distance. It was all normal: Trent, who had his rectangular head partially wrapped in gauze and seemed _somewhat_ recovered from his head trauma, was strumming his guitar hesitantly (there may or may not have been some amnesia involved in the injury); Noah was immersed in another book, having given up on the novel Courtney had previously ruined for him; Katie and Sadie held matching banana-chocolate-strawberry smoothies; Eva resembled a killer bear on the hunt for prey as she paced the length of the pool (twice in a minute) and Cody was nowhere in sight.

Bridgette sat beside the CIT, tanning, as Harold kept casting nervous looks in her direction (though he had nothing to worry about for the time being. If anyone was going to get maimed, it was Ezekiel); Izzy was doing something bizarre with a pool noodle that would have been physically impossible had anyone else attempted it. Courtney turned her head to the buffet and saw Geoff and DJ standing there conversing, though they looked a little bit lost without… _Wait_. _Where is he?_

A new fire suddenly sparking in Courtney's eyes, she whipped her head around and locked onto her friend. "You know who else really gets on my nerves?" she asked, vehemence renewed.

Bridgette blinked open her eyes again, humoring the girl and asking, "Who?" though she was already sure that the answer was, like it had been the last five times Courtney had opened a conversation with that question:

"Duncan!" She slapped her hands on either side of the chair she was perched on, flipping onto her side to better address Bridgette. "You should have seen what happened today while we were on laundry duty!"

Slightly intrigued by the untold gossip, Bridgette propped herself up on her elbow, adjusting herself to face Courtney, and followed with, "_What_ nearly happened?"

Courtney glanced over her shoulder, ascertaining that there weren't any curious ears (namely Izzy) around. "I nearly fell off the rooftop!"

The yawn the blonde had been halfway through was cut short as she scrambled to sit up. "Oh my god. Are you okay?" she asked, eyes already scanning the girl across from her for signs of dire injury as she swung her legs over the side of the chair.

"I'm fine," she replied, brushing off the other's interest with a roll of her eyes. "Duncan pulled me back up. But he needs to watch himself—I swear, if he says _one_ more word to me, I _will _skewer him."

"Wait a second," Bridgette said, having just lost her friend's train of thought; these "I hate Duncan so much!" conversations didn't generally include near-death experiences. (Well, actually, a few had—there _was_ a cliff on Wawanakwa, after all—but they were less common.) "So: Duncan saved you, but you're still seriously ticked off at him?"

The flaw in Courtney's logic didn't register with her. "It's totally his fault I needed saving in the first place!"

Bridgette was going to ask for clarification when she realized she had a _far _more pressing question. "Wait, what are the laundry machines doing on the roof?" She was pretty sure she'd have noticed them the last couple times she went up there with Geoff. (Unless they'd been moved recently…?)

Courtney started to answer, but then cut herself off with a sigh. "It's a really long story. I'd tell you, except I have this _bizarre_ idiosyncrasy against reliving negative experiences through words."

"Okay…" the blonde allowed, puzzling through both the word _idiosyncrasy_ and the little information she'd been given. "Now, I know I don't have all the pieces, but from the sounds of it, he still _saved_ you—instead of letting you fall. Doesn't that count for anything?"

Courtney huffed. "But…it was his fault!"

Bridgette sucked in her cheeks, trying to decide if it was the proper time to teach Courtney the ancient art of "going with the flow". Maybe it wasn't even possible, but one look at Courtney, who looked so near bursting that she resembled an over-filled air balloon, convinced her to at least make an attempt.

"Come on, Court," she prodded. "I know there's a better reason in that head of yours. Why are you so upset with him right now?"

Courtney deflated slightly, now looking more like one of those convenience store balloons that's been there for ages—still full, but no longer close to explosion. "…Really, Bridgette?"

She nodded sagely, turning herself back around and leaning back on her elbows again. "I know you've been working up a speech. Let's hear it."

Courtney turned her head, looking at Bridgette from the corner of her eye, displeasure clearly reading on her face. "Okay, _that's _a false statement."

Bridgette raised her eyebrows and waited.

"Ugh, you know what?" Courtney said, cracking easily. "Fine." She pushed herself off the lounge chair and began pacing. "Here's hoping I explain this all correctly."

Sitting up and rearranging herself so that one leg hung off one side of her seat and the other hugged lightly to her chest, Bridgette nodded, "I'll interpret somehow."

"You have you own self to blame if you misconstrue it all," Courtney warned ominously.

"I'm totally okay with that."

"I'm telling you," the brunette continued, making it all the way around the chair and back to where she started. "It's not going to come out properly."

Bridgette laced her fingers and rested her chin on the perch they made over her knee, raising her eyebrows as she followed Courtney with a skeptical (but carefully non-accusatory) gaze.

Sparing one more glance in Therapist Bridgette's direction, Courtney plopped down on the grass between their two chairs in classic Criss-Cross-Applesauce position, took a deep breath, and fixed her eyes on a blank piece of sky behind Bridgette's head.

"Duncan, he—I can't understand him," she started, her voice growing shaky—from anger or something else, Bridgette couldn't tell. "There's no rhyme or reason to anything he does. It's like his whole life is this random _game_ that he's just playing for kicks! It—he infuriates me!

"Like, when I left the island after the challenge"—her face darkened as she remembered the events that lead to her unfortunate removal—"he was being _really_ sweet. But as soon as he arrives _here_"—she pointed downward, indicating that her little patch of grass represented the whole of the resort—"he waltzes straight into my room, sleeps with me—well, _next _to me—and starts being this complete _ass_! And _then_, as soon as I get used to _that_ whole routine again, he goes and gets us stuck doing the same chore, all so he can save me from falling off the roof!"

She felt this event was necessary to mention, even though she knew it hadn't exactly been part of the plan.

"So _now_, every time he even _looks_ at me, I can't keep myself from hoping he's different again—that he's going to be nice, and thoughtful, and a _good guy_." She looked disgusted by this idea. "But then every time when he's _anything but_, when he's _exactly_ the same—the classic Duncan we all met on Day 1, it's harder on me than if he was a consistent jerk! This—this expectation I have for him to be a good person is what's so _wrong_ here! You're either good or you're bad. Why doesn't he just pick a fricking side?!"

Courtney's speech screeched to a halt, and she closed her eyes dejectedly. When they opened again, they were fixed on Bridgette, waiting for her response.

"Have you ever considered," she began carefully, aware of the fact that she waded in dangerous waters, "that maybe he's just…like that? That he's a little of both sides, all the time?"

"Yes!" Courtney exclaimed, grabbing a fistful of grass and tearing it from the perfectly-manicured grounds. "I _have_ considered it, and the very idea pisses me off to no end! When I'm in the middle of something with him, there's not so much time to think—just dodge his delusions and fire back at him—but the before and the after? Keeping up with this constant guessing game is too much stress for me to handle!"

Bridgette didn't feel qualified to respond since she didn't really understand what Courtney had just said (boys had always made sense to _her…_) Instead, she decided to take a different approach. Adopting a psychologist-esque squint, she flattened out the back of her chair, rolled onto her stomach, and peered over its edge at Courtney, who'd made herself comfortable on the ground. "Have you ever been to the beach?"

Courtney blinked in surprise at the change of topic. "Sure, dozens of times. But what doe—?"

Bridgette cut her off with a second question. "And those beaches have crabs, yeah? The big, flat kind." She held up her hands in a shape somewhere near a slice of bread.

"Right…"

"And if you step on one," she pressed on quickly, sensing that Courtney's interest was decreasing, "it really hurts, right? Because it pinches you."

Her friend furrowed her eyebrows, scrunching her nose slightly. "I have no idea where you're going with this."

"Just hold on, okay? This'll help you," Bridgette insisted, still busy having her sagacious moment. "But, it hurts, right?"

The girl on the ground nodded slightly. "On the rare occasion that I encounter a crab, yes. I suppose so."

"Okay, good!" Bridgette said brightly. At the confused look on Courtney's face, however, she added, "Not about the pinching, but that you know what I'm talking about."

From where she sat, the brunette mouthed, _Ohhhh._

"So here's one more question for you," Bridgette said, finishing her set-up. "Have you ever managed to step on one of those crabs _just _so, and you're _so_ square on top of it that it can't hurt you at all because it can't reach you, no matter how much it tries to?"

Courtney screwed up her face, trying to recall such a situation. After a second, she said flatly, "That has not once happened to me."

Bridgette pursed her lips but pushed on anyway. "Well, I hang out at a really crabby beach, so trust me—it happens."

"All right," Courtney accepted without argument, still trying to figure out what on Earth Bridgette was getting at.

"Well," she said, finally crossing the finish line and getting quite excited about it, "Duncan is like you stepping on a crab!" Bridgette continued on without checking for a reaction. "Ninety-five percent of the time, the crab's going to tangle itself up under your feet, and you'll step on it wrong, and it'll get angry and pinch you, even if it's the creature's own fault.

"But that other five percent of the time, when fate lines everything up _perfectly_, you step on the crab in the exact right way, and you just hop off and head back to your own business." Bridgette returned her gaze to her addressee, who was just kind of sitting there, probably trying to absorb the haphazard analogy. "No one gets hurt!"

"…Except the crab you just stepped on."

Bridgette laughed lightly, but comic relief wasn't going to keep her from getting her point across. "Seriously. Do you get the gist of it?"

Clearing her throat, Courtney nodded slowly. "Yes, I think so. Duncan's like…" Bridgette looked on expectantly, waving her on. "…A crab?"

"_No_," Bridgette contradicted, gripping the metal edge of her chair. "Duncan's like you_ stepping_ on a crab."

Courtney narrowed her eyes slightly, casting her friend a questioning glance. "Aren't those the same?"

"No, not really."

Courtney couldn't keep herself from thinking, _Shut down!, _though the thought came to her in Duncan's voice.

She shuddered, though Bridgette continued on, oblivious to this internal occurrence. "If people weren't on the beach, the crabs wouldn't have issues with anyone except other crabs."

Courtney snorted at the implications of that statement. "So," she summarized, "if it weren't for me, Duncan wouldn't have _any_ social problems to speak of except with other felons?"

Bridgette was forced to admit that the path they were on lead to a riptide, so she scooted herself sideways on her stomach, closer to Courtney. "All right, so maybe that wasn't the _best_ example…"

She ignored Courtney's _"No, duh,"_ expression and continued, "But Courtney! You're the expert crab…stepper…onner. That ninety-five percent of the time when people usually get pinched—it's less for you. The crab _likes_ you! You know how to keep it under control. Sort of."

The crab-stepper-onner scoffed. "Whether the crab likes me or not is entirely irrelevant," she argued. "What matters is that _I_ don't like _the crab_. If I did, don't you think I'd be the first to know?"

_You would think so, wouldn't you?… _Bridgette scooted sideways again, hanging almost her entire left side off her chair. "I wouldn't be so sur—_oof!_" Having scooched one centimeter too far, the chair unbalanced and tipped to the side so that Bridgette tumbled off the side of her seat, face-planting into the grass below.

Courtney giggled, though she scrambled to her friend's aid. "You okay?"

Bridgette nodded rapidly, spitting out a few blades of grass and resting a hand on her head. "Oh, god, I'm seeing stars." She smiled amiably, shaking her head to clear them up.

Katie and Sadie's sheer, high pitched giggling reached their ears then, and the two girls turned their attention to the group that had amassed without them. "Looks like it's about time we get over there," Bridgette commented, gesturing to her boyfriend amid the crowd of ex-campers on the other side of the pool. "Geoff's nearly in withdrawal. He'll start spasming any second now."

Courtney followed her friend's gaze and agreed. In her mind, however, she was listing all the reasons why Bridgette's analogy didn't make sense as it was applied to her situation.

* * *

Did you manage to decode Bridgette's analogy and find the life lesson within? Because Courtney is still trying to process it all.

And now, some ridiculously long-winded notes from your two co-authors, which are chill like the summer.

**From strayphoenix: **You'd think summer would allow us MORE time to write, right? But noooooooooo...SOMEONE'S relatives can't keep themselves occupied during the summer months and MUST come visit and bother while SOMEONE is trying to write a fanfiction! *grumble* *mutter* *destroy-potted-plant*

So our poor Zeke learns his lesson the hard way. Like, CONCRETE hard. ;) And Courtney gives us some insight about her end of her relationship with Duncan (some might call it the SHORT end of that relationship). I know lots of you had questions about Courtney's outburst in Chapter 11—what it meant and why it came out the way it did—that I hope Courtney answered for you herself in this chapter, courtesy of the amazingly gifted Rina.

See, Courtney, smart as she is, has yet to grasp the concept that 'denial' ain't just a river in Egypt. Though she's found THAT out well enough for herself in Total Drama World Tour... Oh, and P.S., I would LOVE to have Bridgette as my therapist. Eh, just as long as she doesn't hurt herself attempting to make too many analogies (or tipping over lawn chairs lol).

Drama, Ahoy! Coming soon to an electronic device near you!

**From Contemperina: **I hope you all don't feel too jipped right now. Stray wanted to add another part to this chapter to make it longer, but that would have required more editing and back-and-forths, which would have postponed this posting. But don't worry—you're not losing any TAOP. It'll be in the next chapter, which should be coming at you relatively soon! …Even though it's the summer and neither of us has much time on her hands. But fear not—it will be okay.

So, the chapter! I have to say, I'm in love with Ezekiel's POV, though I _did _have to restrain myself from writing "eh" too many times. I figure that doesn't get said in thoughts. But then again, I'm not Canadian, so who am I to talk? (Eh.) I hope you are all satisfied with the comeuppance Zeke received. I KNEW (in my gut!) that if either Duncan _or_ Courtney actually found him hiding, he'd come out seriously mangled, and I didn't want to do that to the little guy. So I rammed him into a concrete wall instead. :)

As for Bridgette's haphazard analogy: I still don't know where that came from. I literally was lying in bed one night, mulling over what I would do for the Bridgette/Courtney convo stray and I agreed I'd write, and all of a sudden it hit me. _Therapist Bridgette_! Don't you think that would be a great career choice for her? I mean really. What else is all that patience good for? Besides, you know, life in general. I find it comes in handy _some_ of the time. Like when you're waiting for updates for your favorite Fanfiction stories…

* * *

We'll be seeing you. Possibly sooner than you think.

Thanks for reading! Please review. (:


	14. Never count your marshmallows

It's time! We're back! And with what is possibly our longest chapter yet, thank goodness. A million _thank you_'s to everyone who has reviewed, favorited, alerted, PMed, or been patient enough to stick around for chapter 14 (or any combination of the above). We're writing for you!

If you'll recall, when we left Duncan, he'd failed in locating Ezekiel and then become the focus of Bridgette's nonsensical crab analogy. And now, we learn his fate…

* * *

**Rule 14: Never count your marshmallows (before the campfire)**

"Okay!" Camera-Crony called, trying to appear confident but failing miserably in the face of eighteen rowdy teenagers, gathered (in something that, if you tilted your head and squinted, could have _maybe _resembled a circle) around him beside the pool. "This is your elimination day poolside, and, uh, because I don't actually know all of you, Mr. McLean wanted me to start the roll for him, so… uh, Ezekiel?" Unfortunately, he couldn't hear anything through the cacophonous chatter that surrounded him. "Ezekiel? Are you here? Ezekiel!"

"Aww, man," DJ sighed, Geoff and Duncan at his side (the latter of whom had arrived just minutes earlier, seen everyone in their swim attire, and removed his _unbearably_ uncomfortable shirt accordingly), all three watching the Intern struggle to find the homeschooled cow feed Duncan had been unsuccessful in locating. "I feel bad for him, man."

Duncan rolled his eyes, asking flatly, "Ezekiel or the idiot with the clipboard?"

Geoff and DJ cast him surprised looks.

"Dude, what _did _happen to Zeke?" the party boy asked, his eyes wide. "I haven't seen him since he told me and Katie about how you and Heather…" He waved his hands around dramatically to substitute for words he wasn't sure were in his vocabulary. "…Back on the island, and…uh…oh."

He trailed off at the flat stare Duncan was giving him, exchanging an _Ah-hah! _type look with DJ (and secretly being proud of himself for having picked up on a hint in less than fifteen minutes). "You, uh, didn't kill him, did you?" Geoff hedged, adjusting his cowboy hat nervously. "I mean, I thought you _liked _our man Zed!"

Duncan shook his head, looking up at his friends crossly. "Don't worry about it," he grumbled, returning his focus to Camera-Crony, who had just barely stumbled over a completely uninterested Noah and was now on his tip-toes trying to locate Justin—whose absence would have been obvious if he'd been missing from the rest of Playa's _beautiful _scenery.

"God, this is going to take _forever_," the delinquent groaned in observation. It then occurred to him to ask, "What are we even _doing _here right now?" He'd stumbled blindly out into the crowd after his failed search for Homeschool. He didn't actually know _why _there was a crowd in the first place.

"You heard him, bro," DJ said, nudging Duncan's bare shoulder (because that's about where his elbow fell comfortably, tall as DJ was) with a hopeful expression. "We're at the day's poolside!"

"Yeah, but why _now_?" Duncan asked, hiking a brow. "Aren't these stupid things supposed to be at night?"

"Not on elimination day, man," Geoff explained, pulling his hat down over his eyes to block out the sun—for himself _and _for Duncan. (His hat was _just_ that big.) "Chris does them early on challenge days so he can get to the challenges, and so we can meet the Boat of Losers all chillaxed when it gets here later tonight." He paused, thought that over, and amended, "Well, actually… We're _never _that chillaxed when the boat gets here anyway, so it's pretty lame that we're doing this..."

Duncan gave both of his friends an irritated glance, his upper lip just _itching_ to curl into a snarl. "No one met _me _when _I _got here," he reminded them coolly, narrowing his eyes. "I just got _Chef _and his freaking alter-ego mountain monster."

DJ rubbed the back of his neck while Geoff looked away uncomfortably. "Yeah, well…" DJ began, searching for an excuse. "We didn't know it was gonna be _you _coming! We were waiting for the boat, but it was gettin' really, really, _really _late, and everyone was pretty much…going to bed, you know, and it's kinda scary waiting out there on that old, creaky dock in the dark by yourself…"

"Try getting punked by Hatchet and McLean," Duncan countered, though it came out as more of a growl. "_Then _talk to me."

He couldn't exactly say _why_ he was so mad at the two guys at his side—he was just in a straight-up terrible mood since the roof incident, and it seemed like the best way to get rid of his pent up frustration; after all, the only thing keeping him from doing to them what he _would _have done to Ezekiel was the fact that murder wasn't so great if it left you without decent people to talk with afterwards.

"God, why am I even _here_?" Duncan muttered, shoving away from Geoff and DJ without a backwards glance and heading straight for Camera-Crony.

"Hey!" he barked, punching the Intern hard in the shoulder. At the sight of Duncan's face, the older man let out a girly shriek and shrunk away from the delinquent. Snatching the clipboard in a single clean swipe, he informed him, "I'm taking things from here."

Ignoring the cameraman's halfhearted pleas for the return of his paperwork, Duncan shouted at the top of his lungs (since Chef had previously confiscated his mega-phone and had it sent back to Chris), "_LISTEN UP!_"

The campers around him silenced immediately, turning their heads in his direction for what seemed like the hundredth time that day. Duncan frankly didn't mind—according to his philosophy (which happened to be the Law of the Jungle), it was always better to lead than follow.

"Okay. I'm here to inform you that you're all _freaking wusses!" _he shouted bluntly. In one fluid motion, he grabbed the clipboard by both ends and snapped it in half against his knee, tearing the papers attached to it in the process.

One out of many, Tyler made an offended face, responding with nothing more than, "Dude!"

"This whole poolside thing we're doing right now is _pointless_," Duncan continued, turning around to address the other side of the circle and tossing the clipboard away. "Chris and Chef aren't even _here_!"

Duncan couldn't help but notice that Courtney, who'd been standing next to Bridgette and glaring at him venomously, widened her eyes as the truth of what Duncan had said dawned on her.

"How can you be sure?" Sadie wanted to know. A series of nods followed from the other campers, who each wanted to be absolutely positive that there was no danger of Chris (or, more importantly, _Chef_) ripping them to pieces before they made their exit.

"'Cause Princess and I saw him earlier today"—Duncan jerked a thumb in Courtney's direction, though he couldn't make out the expression on her face from the corner of his eye—"and he was already leaving!"

Courtney pursed her lips at the public use of her pet name, but she met the group's curious gazes by stepping into the circle closer to Duncan.

"It's true," she confirmed. "_Duncan _and I"—she sneered slightly as the name passed her lips—"had to collect Chris's laundry before, and he was well on his way off the island. And if you really think about it," she continued, more for the sake of overshadowing Duncan than because she actually wanted to help her peers, "have we really _ever _seen Chris or Chef around the resort on challenge days? At _all?_"

A wave of voices rose up at the question, everyone checking with everyone else, trying to figure out if what Courtney said was correct. A second or so later, receiving the same answer—"no"—regardless of who was asked, everyone settled back down, looking to Duncan and Courtney for either an excuse to disperse (from Courtney) or a reason to rebel (from Duncan).

Leshawna was the first to break the tentative silence with her signature sass. "You mean I cleaned out all those nasty, hair-clogged drains for no one?" she yelled in indignation.

Duncan nodded, trying to force Courtney back out of the circle without drawing too much attention to their struggle. Courtney wasn't being helpful, though, opting instead to glower and shove him back just as forcefully, if not more so. And straight towards the deep end of the pool, no less. (Good thing almost all of them were dressed in _sort_ of, semi-swimming clothes.)

_"YOU'RE KIDDING ME!" _Eva roared, storming past Duncan and Courtney's undercover struggle and grabbing a terrified Camera-Crony by the shirt collar. "You mean to tell me I spent a whole day with _that_"—she pointed to a startled Cody, who now sported both a crooked nose from the hockey game and a second injury (a bruised jaw) from something unknown—"for nothing? I can't even—!"

"Well, you know what they all always say, don't you, Eva?" Izzy cut in cheerily, flouncing over to the rock-hard girl with the rock-hard grip on Camera-Crony's shirt.

Eva's expression morphed into a glare and darted to the redhead, not changing as she flipped through her limited knowledge of clichés. The crowd gathered around was forced to assume she'd come up short when she didn't answer (granted, they were coming up short too), choosing instead to watch Izzy with an expression that said, in no uncertain terms, _'I am not amused.'_

"Well, do you, Eva? _Evaaaaaa_. Can you hear me?" Izzy waved her hands in front of Eva's eyes, which followed her every move. "Whoops! Guess no one's home!" Izzy shrugged, tapping her lips in thought. "I bet she went into _shock_. You know, that happened to me once. I'd just gotten word that the Russian Mafia had traced my location, and instead of hightailing it out of there like a wild jackalope—which is what I usually do—" she added with a pleasant (for Izzy) flip of her hair, "I just stood there _frozen _like—!"

"_WHAT!_"

"Huh?"

Eva clenched her teeth and repeated herself, while those who were either listening to Izzy's story with rapt attention (like Katie and Sadie) or miming all the different ways they could put themselves out of their misery (like Noah and Tyler) composed themselves after her startling outburst. "_What _do _they _say?"

"What does who say? You mean the Mafia?" Izzy pondered for a moment. "I mean, they're usually all '_My budem ubivat' vas, sumasshedshaya devushka_!' But that really depends on—"

"_Izzy_," Courtney interrupted with a sigh, brushing past her (and a very confused Duncan) to plop down on the pool edge next to Harold, where she didn't fail to notice the nerd's obvious apprehension. "Eva was _asking _about that saying you referenced."

"What…?" The redhead screwed up her face for a moment, trying to think back to life before her story. "Ohhh, you mean the 'You know what they say' saying! Yeah…" She wracked her brain for 1.75 seconds. "I forgot."

"You _forgot_?" Eva cried, still riled up. "_I _was exercising self-control! _I _didn't snap your little neck!" She threw down Camera-Crony (who crawled behind DJ and huddled for protection), locked her eyes on Izzy (who promptly ran back to her place in the circle—_giggling_) and balled up her fists, preparing for a chase. "But you know _what_?" she spat. "_I_ just changed my _m_—!"

It was at this moment that an ear-piercing scream cut through the air—a sound similar to an enraged banshee tickling a laughing dolphin with a squeaky toy.

The sound left the entire resort in surprise (or, more appropriately, _shock_), silent except for the high-pitched echo left bouncing off the walls and the smallest whimper from where Camera-Crony cowered behind Deej, hating that he needed money for college so badly.

After several seconds of silence (and just as many perplexed glances), Leshawna took a step toward the center of the group, hands on her hips, and, glaring almost as fiercely as Courtney was at the Mohawked boy in front of her, exclaimed, "_Hell_, Duncan. What did you do _now_?"

The accused held up his hands in a sign of innocence, smirking hugely all the while (because her accusation was really quite flattering). "Hey, as much as I'd love to take the credit for every time a girl screams—"

Before he could finish his sentence, Courtney shoved herself off the pool deck (and away from a hyperventilating Harold), darted back over to where Duncan was standing, and brought her foot down on the toe of his left Converse, pleased with the satisfying crunch of bones that followed.

Ignoring the boy's pained reaction as he hopped and clutched his foot, the CIT turned back to the lightly snickering crowd and gave them all the reason they needed to disappear. "Well, what are you waiting for?" she yelled. "You can _go _now! Shoo!"

The crowd instantly split in different directions to resume whatever they'd been doing before the unnecessary poolside, thoroughly ignoring the objections that came from the newly upright Camera-Crony in the form of, "Uh, g-guys? I _really, _really need you to stay. Like, Mr. McLean, he, uh, he seriously wanted some footage from today and…"

Duncan had just managed to gingerly put his foot back down when he shot the man a stony glare. (This promptly shut him up.) He didn't make a move to leave, however, so Duncan held up a fist, convincing the petrified man to flee the scene. Urgently, and as fast as was Internly possible.

Meanwhile, Courtney had returned to her distant pool chair with the intention of dragging it back to where it belonged, and then going back up to her room to change out of her dry swimsuit and kill some time before the Dock of Shame. "Oh, Bridgette!" she called, trying to get the blonde's attention. Unfortunately, she was too far away to hear (and also too preoccupied making kissy faces at Geoff—they'd missed out on a _whole _half-day of making out, after all.) "Brid—!"

Cutting herself off with a sigh, Courtney grabbed her friend's blue hoodie from under the other chair. "Might as well be talking to her _surfboard_…" she muttered, turning around.

But Duncan was there to stop her in her tracks. "Hey, Princess. I have a question for you," he announced, tone smug. His bad mood had partially improved thanks to the fear he'd put on the cameraman's face, so he'd decided to take a chance at repairing his love/hate relationship with a certain CIT (namely, making it less '_hate' _and more _'love'.)_

Courtney fixed him with a glare, though it was reflex more than anything. She was in a rotten mood (she really wasn't a hundred percent positive as to _why _she felt so upset—because she _didn't _care that everyone now knew about the Heather thing!), and it just seemed like the right thing to do. "No, you don't," she snapped, not in the mood for questions from a crab.

"How would you know?" Duncan shot back, already noting that the conversation wasn't headed in a great direction. It usually took at _least _three sentences before things turned sour. Oh, well.

Courtney maneuvered around him, folding Bridgette's hoodie into a lovely, square package of sweatshirt as she walked. "Because," Courtney said smartly, "you never have a simple _question_. Whatever you have to _say _right now is either insulting, perverted, or any combination thereof leading to some other sort of rudeness, and right now, I just want to reunite Bridgette with her accursed hoodie before she trips down a flight of stairs or something_."_

She shot him another look over her shoulder purely for emphasis and said pointedly, _"I know you, _Duncan. You _don't _have a question."

Duncan snickered at the harsh (albeit true) personification of Courtney's best friend and, with the hints of a smirk still dancing on his face, said, "You must not know me very well, then, 'cause I was just going to ask if you ever found Ezekiel." He rocked back on his heels, pleased to have given Courtney something she wasn't expecting.

Courtney felt her eye twitch—a nervous tick she hadn't even _realized _she possessed until she'd started dealing with you-know-who. Spinning on her heel, she strode straight back towards Duncan.

"Okay, _one_," she started, shaking out the hoodie and tossing it over one of her shoulders (noting absentmindedly that Duncan had his own shirt draped the same way), "I know you _plenty _well. And two, no. I didn't find him." More softly, she added, "I was sort of hoping _you _had…"

Duncan took a moment to mentally curse Ezekiel for being so good at impromptu hide-and-seek, but he was _actually _more interested in pursuing item number one. Kicking a stray rock off the grass and onto the concrete a few meters away, he inquired, "Don't you think 'plenty well' is a bit of an exaggeration, sweetie?"

Again with those _stupid, _inapplicable pet names. It made Courtney's blood boil. "No," she contradicted, standing her ground both verbally and physically, her arms now free to plant on her hips. "I think 'plenty well' is just about right."

Duncan raised an eyebrow, sensing a challenge. "And would you be willing to _test_that theory?"

Courtney let out a huge huff of an exhale. _No_—the very last thing she wanted was to get into something ridiculously pointless with Duncan at that time, especially after all that had happened earlier the same day (_all of it _related to him!), but turning down his challenge obviously wasn't an option if she wanted to preserve any remaining shreds of her dignity.

"Whatever, troll," she grunted. "_Fine_. Make it quick before I lose Bridgette and the only decent conversation I get in all of Muskoka. What do you have in mind?"

Duncan chuckled, congratulating himself on just how absolutely _frigging _clever he was. "Not much. Just have _one _teeny, itty-bitty question for you," he stated, taking a few steps closer to his target.

"Fine, Duncan!" she said again, growing exponentially more annoyed but not backing down a centimeter. "What?"

Duncan looked her straight in the eye and asked, "Did you know that I wear contacts?"

Now, this caught Courtney off-guard. She'd expected a question about Duncan's family history or his escapades back home (all of which she could answer thanks to information provided by Bridgette, who'd gotten it from Geoff, who'd gotten it from Duncan himself). She actually _hadn't _known that Duncan wore contacts—though that totally explained the intense blue of his eyes (it sort of depressed her to discover they were fake)—but for her pride's sake, she figured it was best to lie. It wasn't like he could tap into her brain and see how long she'd had the information, after all.

Shaking off her surprise as quickly as she could, she scoffed. "Of course I knew _that_." Courtney eyed him as if it was the most obvious thing in the world while simultaneously trying to sneak a peek at his eyes, searching for the clear, circular outline of a contact. "I'm not _completely _oblivious."

"Y'know what? I think you're lying, Sweetheart," Duncan said, smirking as he leaned closer to her and offered an even better view of his gorgeously fake eyes.

"Well," she retorted, refusing to back away, "I'm _not _lying, so you'd better look past that hunch you're getting."

He ignored her. "Do you want to know _why _I think you're lying?" he asked smoothly.

That, Courtney thought, was a legitimately difficult question. _Did _she really want to know? Did she even want to bother? Did she _care_?

"…Why?" she asked at last. Apparently, the answer was 'yes'.

"Because." Duncan backed away a few steps, keeping his eyes locked with Courtney's all the while. It was as if he was trying to build suspense, like their conversation was a soap opera about to cut to commercial. But finally, after what seemed like ages in Courtney-time, he leaned down to her level and whispered slowly, "_I don't wear contacts_."

Then, just a little bit louder, he boasted, "You can't know something that's not true!" happily driving his point home.

Courtney froze, blinking slowly. There were only a few words running through her mind at that point, most of them composed of four letters and none of them respectable (unless you were a gangster and/or rapper. In that case, they were quite respectable.) This was turning into an annoying pattern: Duncan would set her a trap, and she'd walk into it wholeheartedly, without a second glance, giving her arch nemesis just one _more _reason to inflate his damn ego. It killed her.

She broke out of her self-imposed mental criticism to Duncan's voice continuing playfully as he pulled his face back, "It's really too bad you're a compulsive liar, honey. First the weight thing, and now this?" He winked at her for no reason at all. "I don't know if I can ever trust you again."

In all honesty, the second mention of the "weight thing" (she weighed 53 kilos, dammit!) was what pushed Courtney past _embarrassed silence _and into _embarrassed verbal tirade_.

"You know what, Duncan?" she shouted. "Fine! You want me to admit it? Yeah, so I _didn't _know whether or not you wore any damn contacts! I can be more mature than _you" —_her hands balled into fists instead of smacking him—_"_and admit that! But what do _you _know about _me, _huh?" she demanded. "What's my favorite color? What's my dog's name? What's the slogan I used when running for student government?"

The delinquent under fire had already popped his mouth open with a smart answer when, without pause, Courtney changed her mind, immediately waving him off. "You know what? _Don't answer that_. Just go run off with Geoff and DJ and do _whatever _it is you three do all day. I've got better things to do, like getting _this"—_she pulled the blue outer garment off her shoulder and shook it at him—"back to Bridgette."

Having said her piece, Courtney spun on her heel to go locate her friend. Looking down at the hoodie in her hands as she walked, however, reminded Courtney of the conversation the two had had earlier, and glancing back over her shoulder at Duncan—his confident smirk still present—she couldn't help but grin a bit impishly as she pictured an anthropomorphic crab in his place.

Suddenly, Courtney realized that although she didn't exactly like (or _understand_) the haphazard crustacean analogy, there was at least one part that was okay with her. After all: there was nothing she'd have liked better than to step on her crab's face.

Repeatedly, and with extreme force.

* * *

"All right, that's a total of twenty-four dollars and fifteen cents, three pretzel rods, two and a…_half _pairs of socks, and a chicken salad sandwich wagered on Owen," Noah was saying, flipping through the dollar bills like a seasoned card dealer and forming stacks with the goods.

Cody had put down the socks. Gwen was beautiful and talented and all-around amazing, and Heather was a Class A schemer who put Dracula to shame, so the sad truth that Owen was coming home was practically a no-brainer. He, however, _might _have let a little wishful thinking cloud his judgment; a Gwen versus Heather catfight in the finale would make the rest of his year…

"Coooo-deeee!" Beth called, hopping up and down to try and see the boy she was calling for. "Can you _sth_-ee anything yet?"

Breaking out of his thoughts, he shouted, "Nope, nothing yet!" down to Beth from where he sat, high up on a dock-side palm tree with a pair of binoculars in his hands.

That was his usual place come elimination day. It gave him a good view of the Boat of Losers—_whenever_ it decided to come—at which time he'd alert the others and let them know who was on the way. And, until that happened, Palmy offered up the _much_ more interesting Birdseye view of all his fellow ex-contestants.

"So after having to spend, like, the _whole _night sleeping in the NUDE because of the wicked awful heat, I woke up in the morning at about 5am Pacific Standard Time to the sound of this woman SCREAMING!" Izzy was saying, leaping to her feet as she recounting a tale to Tyler, Justin, and Harold (though certain aspects of her story had Cody—and most of the other males within hearing distance, he noted—paying very close attention despite themselves.)

"Man, I hope it's Gwen. Wait, no I don't! But I _do_. But I _can't!_" Trent whined, pulling Cody's attention to yet another argument he was stuck in with himself, pacing up and down the dock as he clutched at his precious guitar like it was the last solid thing in the world to keep him alive.

Chuckling slightly to himself (Trent was so bad at playing it cool when it came to Gwen. Cody was _so_ much more suave), he had to admit, the scene was not unfamiliar. In fact, it already had occurred, more or less, nineteen times over—thirteen of which he had seen—seeing as it was what happened on any night the Boat of Losers was expected to show.

On this particular evening, however, the gathered campers were especially tense (it wasn't just Trent), and for good reason. After all: the new addition to Playa indirectly determined the final two who were left on Wawanakwa, giving those two 50/50 odds at the impressive hundred grand that had, regretfully, eluded every single person now inhabiting Playa De Losers.

Delicately rubbing his bruised jaw, Cody turned his attention away from Trent; watching the guy break down on the dock felt almost like an invasion of privacy. Instead, he returned to Izzy, who aired _her_ private moments as if they were nothing more than the evening news (which, if he thought about it, they probably had been at one point or another…)

"She was being besieged by this _monster _crocodile!" Izzy explained animatedly, miming wrestling against a huge set of jaws. "Like, four whole meters long and weighing at _least_ the same as a South American Rhinoceros! And this lady was totally yelling her lungs out, so I leapt out of my tent and pounced on it!"

Her audience watched in shock as Izzy jumped up on one of the wooden posts supporting the deck, maintaining perfect balance and grinning maniacally the entire time. "We wrestled in that bayou for a good 35 minutes before some spoilsport called animal control," she continued from where she balanced, not far from Cody's palm tree. "'Course, the RCMP were still on my case from that heist with the toothpicks and the stuffed orangutan, so I couldn't be _caught_!"

"Hey!" Katie piped up suddenly, nudging the BFF who sat beside her on the far end of the dock from Izzy. "Has anyone else noticed the impossible amount of turns it takes to get here from the island? Because I thought it was _super_ weird..."

The question had been directed at the group in general, but that didn't impede Sadie when it came to providing an equally perky response. "OMG! I totally noticed that too! And how Chef seems to pass the same patch of seaweed like three times?"

"I _know_, right?" Lindsay added, passing by the two on her way to buffet and then tilting her head in confusion when there was neither staff nor food in sight at 10:30 pm.

Shaking his head at the blonde's confusion, Cody, up in his palm tree-post in order to better (and, more importantly, sooner) spot the coming boat, alternated between looking through his binoculars and glancing down at whatever happened to catch his eye or ears. Eva, for example, caught both, varying between shaking the base of his palm tree violently and threatening him for reasons he still didn't comprehend.

Swallowing down the lump in his throat and grabbing onto one of Palmy's large leaves a bit more tightly, Cody gingerly pulled the magnifying device back up to his eyes, scanning the vast expanse of ocean for the recognizable glow of the Boat of Loser's cabin. Then, he sighed.

_Nothing. _Sometimes he wished he hadn't been appointed as the look-out. It got sort of lonely up there, and it was a little hard to bet from three or four meters in the air, though he'd miraculously managed it. (Not without dropping coins, food, or laundry on people's heads on several occasions, however.) But then again, if he weren't the look-out, he wouldn't have received the attention that came when he, looking through the binoculars once more, shouted excitedly, "Hold the phones, people! I think I see lights!"

"What do you mean, you _think _you see lights, Cody?" Leshawna yelled back up at him, folding her arms irately. "You either _see _them or you _don't!_"

Cody opened his mouth to respond but was distracted as Izzy, humming the _Mission_: _Impossible _theme, hopped from wooden post to wooden post, pretending she was on a secret mission. "Man oh _man_, when I heard those sirens, I _bolted _out of there faster than a gazelle on speed! And just when they thought they had me… I JUMPED into the bayou and hid under the water and held by breath for, like, fifteen minutes or something so they couldn't find me! Like _this!_" she shouted.

And just like that, Izzy did a back flip from her post and dove straight into the water behind her. Even those not engaged in her particular discussion paused to regard this even-more-bizarre-than-usual occurrence; Cody counted at least eleven heads perk up before resuming their own conversations.

After about a minute and no Izzy, Harold dared a peek over the edge of the dock. "Did she really just…?"

"Yup," Justin replied with a sigh, already leaving to join another conversation. He, like Cody, had quickly learned that it was better to just take Izzy at face value. Plus, any more intense thinking would form worry lines on any _perfect _model forehead, and those were _so_unattractive. Or so Justin said.

"Is it weird that I kinda _really_ want a video of that?" Tyler asked, a happily dazed look on his face as he imagined Izzy's story taking place, live, in color, and with vivid detail—especially the alligator wresting part. "And that I want to put it on repeat for the rest of my life?"

Cody was about to shout down words of agreement (Gwen was hot, but Izzy had that whole insanity thing going for her) when a toque found its way into his peripheral vision.

Ezekiel, who'd been hiding in the bushes nearby (still on the prey list for Duncan and Courtney), had been listening in and was desperately trying to plug his nosebleed when he heard Tyler's question. "_Is_ it weird?" he asked, confused, as Noah, unaware of anything that had just occurred, returned to his calls of, "Gwen, anybody? Gwen? No? Okay, Heather. Who thinks she got booted?"

Lindsay raised her hand.

"And wants to _do something _about it," he elaborated dryly.

The hand went back down.

"Hey!" Cody hollered, glancing back out into the black and interrupting the many budding conversations below. "I definitely see lights!"

Bridgette, after sparing a quick glance in Cody's direction, joined the separate conversation between Katie and Sadie, adding, "Seriously, I _totally_ agree: there's no _way_ that trip should take so long. I've never had to wait that long even for a wave—on _flat days!_ I'm sure Hatchet's killing sea turtles with all the extra gas they're putting into that thing…"

Noah, self-appointed bookmaker and, consequently, handler of all bets for the evening, noted to no one in particular, "If you ask me—not that anyone around here _does_—the man should've had his boating license forcefully removed _years _ago."

"Amen," Duncan deadpanned from where he slouched against another palm tree, leisurely picking at his nails with his switchblade.

Cody himself couldn't comment. His removal from the island (and the ocean floor. _Thanks a lot_, Beth) had been a bit out of the norm, seeing as he'd been in a full body cast. And on _the ocean floor._

"Really, you shouldn't be so cruel, Noah," Katie chastised, standing up and making her way over to him to toss a quarter (on Gwen) onto his betting table. "Chef might've just gotten lost on his way here."

Flipping Katie's quarter onto the largest stack of goods, Noah pulled his eyes up to meet hers. When they did, Cody (from his excellent vantage point) saw that the expression on his face was nothing short of incredulous, an eyebrow hiked high. "After having already made the trip _nineteen times?_"

"Can you make anyone out yet, Cody?" Courtney asked impatiently, interrupting his observation of the Katie/Noah conversation by marching over to the base of his tree—ignoring Eva's steely glare and opting instead to give Cody her own.

Cody threw the binoculars back up to his face, trying to look productive so as not to face the wrath of Courtney. "Not yet," he replied with a sigh, "but it's heading our way for sure!" This seemed to satisfy the brunette, who marched away and straight over to Duncan, striking up an argument over _whatever_ was bothering her at that moment in time.

"Well," Sadie said, prancing over to where Katie and Noah stood arguing (well, Noah _sat_), "he usually drives us here in the dark, you know. He might be nearsighted."

Katie's face lit up with comprehension. "Come to think of it," she mused, tapping a finger to her lips, "that would _totally _explain how some of the stuff that gets in our food ends up there..." She shuddered at the thought.

"Guys, guys! It's coming into view now!" Cody announced, waving his arms around to get their attention.

Noah snorted, ignoring Cody as he had ignored Izzy. "Are you serious, Katherine?" he asked as he casually resumed his bookkeeping, his condescending tone growing so extreme that it drew even Duncan and Courtney's attention away from their thriving argument. "That man may be many things, including a _sadist _and co-conspirator to all our potential _murders, _but he's most assuredly not—"

Duncan was about to put an end to Noah's lordliness with a quick trip to the ocean floor to join McCrazyPants—Cody could tell by the look on his face—but before he'd even taken a step in the boy's direction, Katie reached down to the bookworm she was suddenly towering over and grabbed him by the collar of his shirt.

Pulling him straight up out of his chair so they stood nose to nose, a deathly cool and overall _foreign _glare on her face, Katie spoke in a completely even voice. "Do. Not. _**EVER**_. Call me. Katherine," she commanded. "_Capiche_?"

Body frozen and expression stunned, Noah coughed out a, "Yes, ma'am," just a tad bit on the frightened side. As were the other campers who'd been paying attention to the conversation, if their shocked stares and gaping mouths indicated anything.

And just like that, Katie was the BFFL everyone knew and was annoyed by once more. "Fantastic!" she chirped happily, dropping Noah back onto the dock in exchange for becoming exceedingly perky once more. Noah, still in shock, could only blink his eyes disbelievingly at her and Sadie as the two walked back over to where they'd been sitting prior to the conversation.

"Cody, my man!" Geoff yelled up through the palm branches, oblivious to what had just occurred and startling the _un_-oblivious boy in the tree. "You're killin' us down here with the suspense, dude!"

Trent, breaking out of his own little world of intense panic and falling to his knees, screamed, "WHO IS IT? I NEED TO KNOW WHO IT IS!" his hands (and guitar) outstretched to Cody as if begging would make the bucktoothed boy's eyesight sharper.

If only, if only.

"I can almost see it now…" Cody narrated quickly, squinting through the lenses. "It's just about to—"

Several aggravated shouts of _"CODY!" _erupted from the campers.

And in answer, he called, like a television announcer: "_IT'S GWEN!"_

If happiness could be quantified on a scale, said scale would have slid to zero, migrated to Antarctica, committed suicide, and then plummeted into the ice cold ocean.

From Leshawna came a grunt and a curse, followed by, "No!"

From Duncan, a blank and cold (yet somehow sad) stare of disbelief out to the boat. "No way."

Lindsay pouted, whimpering, "Oh, noes…" while DJ murmured, "Aw, man," hanging his head and giving Geoff a consolatory clap on the back.

Eva began taking out her frustration out on the palm tree, forcing Cody—who wasn't sure of how he felt about his pseudo-girl joining him on Loser Island instead of winning 100 grand and asking _him _to join her on Star Island—to grab hold of Palmy for dear life. "No! No no no no NO!"

Jumping up from his knees and clasping his hands together as he left his guitar on the ground, Trent turned his head to the dark sky and said a silent thanks along with a huge cry of, "_YES_!" Noting the stares he was getting, he lowered his head, amending, "I mean, no!" A second later, head back to the sky: "But, _YES!_"

Courtney merely pursed her lips, still trying to decide if this was for the very best or for the much, much worse.

Apparently hoping to move things along, Noah resituated himself in his bookmaker's chair (his behind had a few splinters from the part of the dock Katie had dropped him on) and shoved Heather and Owen's piles together. He waved all the campers over for dividing out the goods, muttering to himself, "Karma's a bitch." (He'd lost five dollars for betting on Owen.)

It was at this point of the night that the campers always split into two groups: those who stayed to greet the new arrival and those who… didn't, either because they didn't like said new arrival, were tired and wanted to go to bed, or a combination of both (i.e. being antisocial). And while a bed sounded nice to Cody, the promise of Gwen kept him where he was. Those who belonged to the second group quickly collected their cut from Noah (if they were _receiving _a cut at all) and turned towards the main building, suddenly craving their pillows.

Duncan, a staying member of the first group, turned back to the ocean, analyzing the faint light in the distance that he assumed to be the boat. He was taken by slight _déjà vu _of his own homecoming; squinting into the distance at a blurry light, not exactly sure what would happen when the boat docked. It felt all too familiar. "This _bites, _man," he grumbled.

"I can't believe it either," Bridgette agreed, kicking off her sandals and sitting so her feet dipped into the water as she waited for her friend to arrive. "I mean, I really, really, _really _thought it would b—"

"_**NO**__!"_Cody screeched from his perch suddenly, slamming the binoculars back up against his face.

"Geez," Noah said with a roll of his eyes, meandering over to where the stragglers were waiting. "Delayed reaction time mu—?"

"_IT'S __**HEATHER**__!"_he shouted at the top of his lungs, spastically gesturing at the members of Group Two like a madman to get the _heck _back over to the dock and see for themselves.

_**"WHAT?"**_

The word exploded out from each and every ex-camper in the same instant, all nineteen of them (minus Cody, Ezekiel, and Izzy) charging to the water's edge, struggling and shoving at each other in order to get the best possible view.

"How do you confu_-sth _Gwen and _Heather?" _Beth desperately wanted to know as she accidentally elbowed Courtney, who gave her a vicious shove back into the crowd, where she was nearly trampled.

His eyes still glued to the image in his binoculars, Cody acknowledged this incredibly valid question with a brief shrug of his shoulders. "Looks like she did something with her hair… But it is definitely her! She's screaming at Chef, throwing a _huge _tantrum! And now she's…" Actually, Cody didn't really know what she was doing, so he let the sentence hang. Whatever it was, she looked thoroughly pissed off. And that was exactly how he remembered her.

"Wait a minute," Justin said out of the blue, putting all the pieces together. "_Heather's _on the boat… So _that _means…"

It was at that moment that Izzy burst forth from the underneath the dock, breaking the surface of the gentle waves and spraying everyone with water. She pulled herself onto the wooden surface, hair plastered to her face and clothes dripping seawater, but despite it all, she wore a grin that _actually_ stretched from ear to ear.

"Gwen and Owen are the _final two__!_"

At the realization, a chorus of cheers broke out immediately amid the previously struggling campers, as well as a variety of happy dances. Couples embraced, and friends high-fived. Because even though the campers all had their differences (some more drastic than others), there was one thing they could all agree on:

Heather _would_ not, _should_ not, and _**could not **_win. And, if Cody's eyes were not deceiving him (and he was pretty dang sure they weren't), _she __**hadn't**__!_

"Woohoo!" Geoff whooped, performing his standard fist-pump with one hand while he dipped Bridgette with the other, planting a deep kiss on her lips that turned her insides into jellyfish goo.

Courtney was actually glad her best friend and most of the others were occupied, as that meant none of them were paying attention to her and the cheerful smirk she couldn't _quite _keep off her face.

Izzy began cabbage-patching, much to the chagrin of all the campers getting wet because of it. "Go Owen! Go baby! Uh huh! Yeah, baby! Go baby!"

Lindsay stood off to the side of the chaos, trying to do some sort of very complicated (for Lindsay) math on her fingers. After some time, she gave up and asked dejectedly, "Okay, _how _did you guys figure that one out?"

Masked by the sounds of Katie and Sadie squealing in a gut-crushing hug, Ezekiel said, from his hiding spot in the bushes, "That's so fly, yeah! Though I'm n'oot quite sure what we're cheering foo'r, eh…"

"I knew it!" Trent exclaimed, jumping around like he'd just won the lottery. "I always knew she could do it! I love you, Gwen!" he yelled, cupping his hands around his mouth. "Do you hear me? _I love you!_"

Beside him, Harold pulled his fist to his side, nodding sagely while he hissed, "Yesssssssssss."

But last of all, and most menacing by far, Duncan cracked his knuckles, smirking darkly at the approaching boat. "Oh, _Hell _yes."

* * *

Gwen? Heather? Gwen? Heather! Now that you're sufficiently confused (or not), it's time for trouble.

And _now_, some ridiculously long-winded notes from your two co-authors, which were haphazardly assembled in the wee hours of the night:

**From strayphoenix: **And now, the moment you've all been waiting the entire summer for—The Arrival of Imminent Evil! Muahaha! If you guys thought this story was kicking ass BEFORE...

I hope you don't mind the extra long chapter in recompense for the extra long wait you, our so gracious fans, have had to endure this summer. We were both on pretty lengthy dry spells—not of material, grant you, but rather _time to write/edit the material_. So we made this chapter extra long and extra juicy/dramatic with sincere promises that you won't have to wait nearly as long for the next bits which I know you're all DYING to read.

In other news, Kudos to **Rina** for that awesome bit about Duncan's contacts! Anyone else ever wonder how he's dark haired with such blue eyes?

Also, just curious, did we actually manage to punk anyone with our Gwen/Heather swap? Most of you have obviously seen the show, so we thought it would be an unexpected twist to mistake Heather for Gwen from the Playa dock. We were kinda aiming for a 'WHAT? But-But-But-BUT IT SHOULD BE HEATHER?' reaction. Did we pull it off? Or were you guys too clever for us? :P

Remember those storms we predicted? We're batting up a Category 6 as we speak...

**From Contemperina: **So guys. It's been a while, huh. How've you been? Holding up okay? Enjoying summer? …Fabulous. Well, it would seem that last chapter, I was all gung-ho about getting you _another_ chapter in just a couple week's time. And now, we've all just suffered through the longest time break between chapters this story has ever seen. Ironic, no? Funny how that kind of thing works…

But enough of that! As I sit here listening to shamelessly happy pop music, trying to differentiate between what merits mention in my author's note and what doesn't, the one thing that keeps popping into my mind is: I REALLY, REALLY, REALLY HOPE YOU LIKED THE CHAPTER! Pure and simple.

And now, because two paragraphs is NOT enough to make you all read (hahah. Oh, dear…) I feel the need to reiterate:

Heather's on her way! (_Not_ Gwen.) I _do_ hope we at least confused you a little bit with the whole Cody-in-a-tree (Palmy!) -with-weak-eyes thing. Poor kid mixed up Gwen and Heather. How do you do that? We gave him a section in his POV, however, because after watching TDWT (I'm being patient and not watching all the episodes early on YouTube this season! Episode about Jamaica, here I come…), I'm falling in love with that kid all over again.  
But seriously. Did we give anyone a double take, or were you all, "Pshh, what they're doing is obvious. Of _course _Heather's coming and Cody's eyesight just sucks"? Genuine curiosity, here. :)

Also, I'd like to thank all of you who took a stab at decoding Bridgette's crab analogy. Nearly everyone was spot-on, and I got a kick out of reading and replying to all those reviews. It would seem that **stray** and I have a very smart audience! Either that, or you just think in the same crazy way I do when it comes to strange analogies.

Hurricane Heather is on her way. Get excited, and take cover.

* * *

Thanks for reading! Please review (:


	15. Never accept defeat

Welcome back to _The Art of Pretending_! We're happy to see you. And hopefully, you're happy to see us too. :) Special thanks to all our readers and reviewers! It means the world to us.

If you'll recall, when we left Duncan, he'd just found out that, contrary to Cody's original belief, it was _Heather_ on the Boat of Losers and on her way to Playa. And now, we learn his fate…

* * *

**Rule 15: Never accept defeat**

It was All Over. _Busted_. Ceased. Done. Ended! _Finished__!_

Heather furiously struggled to think of a defeated adjective that started with the letter G to avoid coming to terms with the fact that her time on Wawanakwa was over (Gone!) and, for perhaps the first time in her perfectly perfect life, she had to admit: she'd _lost_.

There was no consolation prize, no pat on the back or 'nice try!'—absolutely no hiding from the ugly truth. She was on the Boat of _Losers_, for heaven's sake! If that wasn't a giant, blaring signal of loserism, she didn't know _what_ was. And that didn't even come close to the whole matter of her new _look_.

"You are going to be _SO_ sorry when I get through with you!" Heather threatened, fueling the fire in her words with the bitterness of her thoughts. "When my lawyers get their hands on your military history—if you even actually _have _one!—I am going to _destroy you!_" She stabbed a finger at Chef, simultaneously trying to keep her balance (her fiercest, most no-nonsense stance) where she stood, harassing him behind the wheel of their rickety boat. "YOU HEAR ME? I will obliterate every _single _shred of a future career you have left!"

"Yeah, yeah," Chef grunted, remaining unfazed. "Chris beat ya to it by about 20 episodes, girl!" He turned to the boat's meager stereo system and jabbed his index finger (_huge _in comparison to the miniscule stereo) at the ON button, twisting the volume dial up as far as it would turn to drown out Heather's argument. Unfortunately, the few notes that would have made it past the speakers were drowned out by a hurricane of static.

"Flaming teenagers, thinking this was all gonna be a walk in a park," the Marine muttered, rolling his , "Even the CIT girl didn't whine _this_ much!" Chef shouted, his deep voice finding its way under the white noise and to Heather's ears. "_She_ gave up after an hour and a half, but _you_ just keep on goin' and goin' and _goin'_ like there ain't gonna be a tomorrow to blab about!"

"I am _not _whining!" Heather shrieked, trying to be heard over the roar of electric dysfunction. "How _dare_ you accuse me of—of—_UGH!_" She couldn't even hear herself over the crackling of static, which meant Chef _definitely_ couldn't hear, which, she concluded as she furiously stomped out of the boat's cabin, in turn meant that any more screaming would be a waste of her vocal chords. She would be needing those for when she stepped off the boat and…and…

Heather made to clutch at her hair and missed. _What can I even do?_ she fumed, throwing herself down onto a couple crates in the back of the boat—and biting back the small shriek that arose as a splinter poked her rear.

Was there even a way to get revenge on such an unfair, embarrassing removal? _'You didn't actually accept the dare,_' Chris had said. She hadn't "actually accepted the dare" her splintered _ass! _With a small wince, Heather removed the offending sliver of wood and pitched it over the side of the boat into the dark, cold water (which was a little overkill, in retrospect), coming to rest her chin in her hands.

_You didn't __**actually **__accept the dare. You didn't actually __**accept **__the dare. You didn't actually accept __**the dare**__._

The phrase repeated itself over and over in Heather's mind, Chris's skater drawl somehow managing to emphasize every word and yet none of them, all at the same time. It continued on until she wanted to bang her head against the side of the boat; she would have jumped out into the ocean and swum straight back to Wawanakwa for immediate, brutal revenge on her host if only she knew where the heck it was. (She was pretty sure she'd seen that same floating coconut at least twice already…)

But Heather could settle for suing the pants off Chris—all thirty designer pairs!—for all the mental strife the show had caused her. The Total Drama machine would be in debt for years (no, _decades!_) after she got through them. Anyone who so much as owned a TDI _lunchbox_ was going to be plunged into such inescapable poverty after her lawyers got through with them, they wouldn't remember what a TV _looked_ like! She could sue for her injuries (especially those to her pride and image), the show's dangerous conditions, unfair removal from the competition…

The queen bee should have been losing steam by that point, but the vicious thoughts kept coming, as that particular train of thought sparked even _more_ fury. She could hardly believe Courtney had given up after only an hour and a half! That's what Chef had said, but was he trustworthy? _That_ was the real question.

Heather could see it so clearly, it was practically in HD: Courtney throwing a hissy fit, swearing to set her lawyers on Chris and Chef and anyone else those sharks could sink their teeth into, all the while throwing unnecessarily long words into the unnecessarily long rant. (But an hour and a half _only_? _Wuss. _Or perhaps the _heartbreaking_ separation from her lover had gotten to her…)

Regrettably, Heather realized, still resting her forehead in her hands, she was doing nearly the exact same thing. At the time, she had laughed at Courtney's less-than-graceful exit from the island and called the overdramatic junior-counselor nasty names behind her back, but suddenly finding herself in just about the same situation, Heather had to admit: it stung. Being forced to leave without the money, under unfair terms, stung more than anything had ever stung her before—even those monster hornets she'd encountered on the south side of Mt. Wawanakwa (and those stings were _still _itching three weeks later!).

Courtney had said she'd sue, but what for, exactly? Heather's lawyers could figure all those technicalities out, she supposed—if Courtney even knew what she was talking about in the _first_ place. Heather would have to keep track of how her lawsuit was going, see what she could use from it… After all, if little Miss Politician could do it, why couldn't she? In fact, if Heather made like Courtney and got to work as soon as possible, she could almost certainly—

"Yeah _right,_" she growled to herself, cutting her thoughts short with a roll of her eyes. "Turning into a whiny, lawsuit-obsessed, cardigan wearing drama princess is the _last_ thing I want to do."

It was true—wasn't it? Heather was far too strong to fall into _that_ girl's stereotype. Sure, the brunette was a born leader, not to mention Courtney carried herself with a confidence that rivaled even Heather's, but that was where the similarities ended. And really, were those even reasons for admiration? Heather didn't need _more_ competition. If anything, their similarities were two more reasons to _dislike _Courtney.

Courtney thought she was _so awesome_. So frigging _great_. She thought she was smarter than all of them, _crazy_ inventive, the world's _greatest_ motivator, but worst of all, Heather knew—there was some truth to her swagger.

Heather hid it well (besides being a manipulative genius, she was also an excellent actress), but Courtney had one-upped her on _more_ than one occasion. Phobia Factor, for instance. The girl had been one hundred percent behind her team, pushing them (well, more like _yelling _at them) to win, while Heather had been useless, cowering in fear of nothing more than a fat, Asian wrestler. (Though in her defense, he had been really, _really_ fat.)

Or even _before_ that, during the dodgeball game. Heather had everything completely under control, and her team was all set to win, but then who sabotaged her success? _Courtney_. It had been _her_ brilliant idea to wake up the green-haired violence machine called Duncan. How were the Gophers supposed to compete with that? He was a seasoned criminal, for crying out loud! They were done as soon as Courtney poked that delinquent in the nose with a stick.

The girl had a brain—one of the very few on their island—and Heather had to hand it to her: She knew what she was doing.

"Ugh!" The more Heather thought about it, the more irritating the whole situation became. Every time she turned around, Courtney was there, preoccupied being a slightly nicer, somewhat less tactful, _extremely_ more annoying version of Heather herself. Sure, imitation was said to be the sincerest form of flattery, but she wasn't even _aware_ of it! Come _on! _If that wasn't reason to be pissed off...

Then of course, after Courtney's shameful spectacle of an elimination, Heather had expected to be home-free. She still wasn't sure who she had to thank for taking her competition off the island and out of the way—for good. Though if mystery man (guy? girl?) hadn't rigged the CIT off, Heather probably would have cracked eventually and done it herself; she'd fixed enough beauty pageants in her favor to recognize a bait and switch when she saw one—especially one as obvious as the one that had sent the poor girl packing. (It was all really quite amateur.) Granted, she never would have expected Weird Goth Girl or the loud and proud Talking Booty to get _nearly _as far as they had at the time. They'd proven to be even bigger problems.

Maybe Heather would go after Leshawna after she was done with Lindsiot (because really, dissolving that Barbie into a miserable puddle of tears was hardly going to take _any_ effort). She was dying to rip her claws into someone—a real fight to once again assert dominance over her peers—and Leshawna was really the only person who could give her the kind of satisfaction she sought. Heather snickered briefly as a thought danced across her mind before she dismissed it. Like the high and mighty CIT even knew how to throw a punch.

Pleased with this rough sketch of a plan, Heather pushed herself off the crates and made her way over to the edge of the barely floating death-trap. She'd been squinting into the distance for any clue towards where she was headed for a few minutes when her eyes locked onto what _could_ have been, if her mind wasn't playing tricks on her, lights, _way_ over there across the impossibly long expanse of black water. Though if it was actually a sunrise, and she'd been driven in circles all night, she was totally gonna bump Leshawna down to victim number two right after—

**"ROUGH WATER UP AHEAD!"**

"_Holy sh—__**CHEF**__!"_ Heather screeched, her head snapping forward as she was thrown straight into the cold metal railing in front of her. Scrambling for her balance, she yelled, "Did it ever occur to you to _avoid_ the rough water, you useless dimwit? Why don't you—! …Huh?"

Heather's hands had taken hold of the railing of their own accord, and releasing her death-grip on the metal revealed a tiny carving of a skull, carelessly chiseled into the barrier. And, of course, she'd seen _that _symbol before…

Duncan _would _be the person to deface a moving vehicle to pass the time, she decided in disgust. And he would have been gag worthy just for being a criminal, but to make matters worse, he was a perv too! (Double retch.)

It was disgusting and degrading, but less than forty-eight hours ago, she'd been curled up next to him like a damsel in distress, and he'd been totally _sold_—happier than she'd ever seen the sucker. Probably the one and _only _thing he had going for him was his fantastically delicious set of abs, which were great to look at and even better to sleep against and nearly made up for him being such an insensitive bastard. Nearly.

"Get a _grip_, Heather!" she reprimanded, rolling her eyes in distaste as she recoiled back from the railing. She mimed slapping herself. "Tell your stupid hormones to shut _up!_"

After all, if she allowed herself to start seeing that _hoodlum_ in a positive light (though it was more of a hazy, murky, hormone-tinted light, really), how long would it be before she started thinking Harold was _cool?_ Lindsay was _smart?_ Courtney was _superior?_ Duncan, she swore to herself, was neither handsome nor good-looking; besides that, he was childish, and cocky beyond any scale unit of measure invented.

"He carves skulls into stuff for _fun! _He terrorizes people just for kicks!" she reminded herself, glowering at the carving just beside where she stood. "He pees in the woods and does God _knows_ what else when no one can keep track of his arrogant ass! There's _nothing_ attractive about him," Heather concluded, standing firm and glaring out into the offending shimmer of light. "Hell, the only person desperate enough to think he's even _remotely_ dateable is—"

Inspiration struck gold. "Of course…" she breathed, nodding slowly to herself as a better plan began to form in her mind.

Courtney would need to be informed that Heather was boss. And she plain old _hated_ Duncan (_and_ his delicious abs!) for too many reasons to run through in one sitting. It was a '_two for the price of one' _special just _calling_ her name.

If there had even been any doubt that Heather was the malicious mastermind everyone had come to know and fear (which there shouldn't have been anyway), it would be nonexistent within a matter of minutes. She'd just figured out exactly what would take the tension off her evening of shame. Her signature malicious grin spreading across her face, she murmured, "Guess getting kicked off might not be a _total_ waste of my time and energy…"

Heather turned to the boat's cabin, fighting spirit renewed. "HATCHET!" she shrieked, pitch just high enough to travel through the static. "Get this boat to wherever it is we're going before I decide to commit _suicide_ and frame your sorry ass for it! Let's _**MOVE**__!"_

Hatchet muttered something foul under his breath, but the raven-haired girl was too preoccupied planning her enemies' respective downfalls to notice or care.

* * *

It turned out that just because Courtney could physically see the boat, it wasn't actually _close_.

She should have remembered this, having attended over half the other campers' arrivals, but waiting for the boat was like an optical illusion: no matter how many times she waited, no matter how long she stared or how many times she yelled or prayed for it to hurry the _heck _up, the effect was always the same. The boat looked to be either entire kilometers or mere meters away—there was no in between, which yielded an effect not dissimilar to estimating the arrival of hurricane so huge it blocked out the sun, or waiting for water to boil. In the _Yukon_.

She'd been on the dock with all the other campers—who'd all decided to stay, just to revel in the Wicked Witch's downfall and possibly (try _definitely_) find room for mockery somewhere—for at least twenty minutes. As it turned out, a lot could be said in twenty minutes, most of which was lost on Courtney, too busy rehearsing and re-rehearsing the insults she'd hurl at Heather for knifing (Spooning? Forking? She didn't even know anymore) with Duncan.

It wasn't hard to pick up on the gist of the chatter, though; most of it was nothing but pointless speculation and meaningless guesswork. How did Heather get voted off? (They dared her to grow a heart and she couldn't!) Who would win? (Owen! Gwen! No, Owen!) What would the last challenge be? (Something _super _intense!) Did everyone get to vote for the winner? (Chris _said_ they all did!)

_Ha_. As if Chris ever followed through on his promises.

Honestly, though, Courtney didn't really know whom she'd vote for if given the chance. Gwen was certainly the more worthy competitor, but all her brooding was _so_unattractive from the practical standpoint. At least Owen managed a smile every once in a while. Well, more often than that. Actually, Courtney couldn't remember him ever _not_bearing a smile. "300 pound sack of joy" was certainly the correct description for him… Maybe she would just vote with the majority. Politically, that would be the wisest thing to do.

Courtney was so far off on her mental tangent that she didn't even notice how all the campers had subconsciously formed, more or less, a line extending across the dock, like a blockade against Heather. It carried a "You'll have to get through all of us before you get to paradise" sort of message, which Courtney thought was very fitting. What wasn't fitting, however, was the certain boy who'd somehow squeezed his way between the brunette and Izzy. It was like she had a magnetic attraction to idiocy.

"Plotting revenge?" Duncan asked, reading her mind.

"Hardly," Courtney scoffed, keeping her eyes fixed on the approaching vessel, still in the _looks-like-kilometers-away_ stage. "_Revenge_ is for all the unprofessional persons on this island like yourself. I prefer to think of it as counterinsurgency."

"_Persons_?" Duncan wasn't even going to _touch_ 'counterinsurgency'. Anything past four syllables was pushing his limit. "You mean _people_."

"No, I mean _persons_," Courtney replied flatly, rolling her eyes. "I can physically count you all. It's a grammar rule. Look it up."

"Can I look _you_ up instead?" he asked, eyeing her cheekily.

Courtney tried to shoot him a warning look, but the corners of her lips kept trying to twitch up into a smile. She was still mad at him for sleeping with her, giving her a heart attack, falling on her, making them do chores, almost dropping her off a rooftop, the Heather incident… (Wow, the list was much longer than she'd originally thought—and she was only counting the major incidences!) So, smiling was in no way permissible. Heck, she didn't even know why she was even _tempted _to do so!

"That _literally_ doesn't make any sense," she informed him, crossing her arms and clamping her jaw down to prevent any signs of amusement.

Duncan shrugged, allowing himself an easy grin. "I know. I jus—"

"Soooo, guys!" Izzy broke in, jumping in front of them with a conspiratorial grin (and splattering the two with a little leftover saltwater in the process). "How do you think Heather's going to be acting when she gets here, huh?" She squinted a little, eyeing the pair like a psychologist/secret agent. "_Violently_ vengeful or _icily _evil?"

The two in front of her blinked. The question was random, yes, but as far as Things Coming Out Of Izzy's Mouth went, it was actually a rather reasonable inquiry. So, after a second of contemplation, Courtney replied, "Evil," at the exact same moment that Duncan said, "Violent. For sure."

"Violent?" Courtney questioned, aghast. "What are you, twelve? Heather's not going to roll onto the deck throwing a _hissy fit_ or anything. How could you possibly expect that from her?" Courtney became conscious of the fact that she had started an argument over nothing. She hadn't thought it doable until it had started happening on a regular basis.

Duncan sneered, vaguely noticing that Izzy had already dive-and-tucked away to go question Geoff and DJ on his other side. "She's more likely to do _that_ than take her elimination lying down!" Duncan shot back. "You can _trust_ me on that."

Courtney pursed her lips, glaring. "Well, I'm sure _you'd_ know," she acknowledged coldly, "what with how _close_ you two got back on the island and everything. You're probably the expert on all things tall, dark, and harridan by now."

Oh. So _that_ was how it was going to be, Duncan realized. _Fine_. "That again?" he asked, hiking up the eyebrow with the piercing. "It's been like five minutes since you brought that up last. _Five."_He held up the same amount of fingers, shoving them in her face to prove his point. He went on exasperatedly, "And as I told you _five minutes_ ago, that whole mess _wasn't_ my fault. Let it _go_."

"Not _all_ yours," Courtney allowed, narrowing her eyes further. "It wasn't _all_your fault. Half goes to you. Heather gets the other."

This, at least, was an improvement from five minutes ago. At that point, Duncan had been allotted three fifths of the blame. And five minutes before that, it had been three quarters. "So I get half now? That's one fifth less blame than last time," the delinquent concluded, counting in his head.

Courtney sucked in a deep breath, turning her eyes and her torso back to the approaching boat and away from Duncan. "Take a math class, would you?" she demanded.

"Only if you're the teacher."

The Boat had since entered the _mere-meters-away_ stage. She could practically hear ominous thunder cracking in the background, signaling the arrival of unadulterated evil. "You're pathetic," she said plainly to the boy next to her.

"You're dead wrong."

Courtney would have responded to his severe words had she not been cut off by the overwhelming noise of the Boat of Losers. She would have said, "Ha. Icily evil. I _told_ you," had Heather not been screaming her head off at Chef, who was ignoring her just as he'd ignored Courtney all those many weeks ago.

Additionally, Courtney would have given Heather a firm piece of her mind had Duncan not beaten her to it and met the new-arrival as she stepped onto the dock. Fixing her with the cruelest of his many glares, he muttered threateningly, "I've been _waiting_ for this."

The biggest storm of the century was finally upon the fragile paradise that was Playa De Losers—and it was wearing designer wedges and an expression to boil water _instantaneously_.

Heather was back.

* * *

The calm before the storm. How ominous.

And now, some ridiculously long-winded notes from your two co-authors, which contain an important plea:

**From strayphoenix: **Sorry to put off Heather's arrival another chapter, but I hope we infused this story with another whole level of drama :D. With our wonky summer, we had to change up our chapter breaks and this turned out being a separate chapter (we didn't mean it!) :P

So Heather's been scheming some well sought after revenge for our favorite duo. ;) Personally, I'm a fan of writing for Heather because contrary to the popular trend, Heather only LOOKS like she's being evil for no reason. Her reasons are just self-centered and self-serving to her own wicked purposes, which make sense when you think of how her brain works. If we had just jumped on over to Heather arriving after the last chapter it would have seemed like another one of those cliché 'Heather attacks the main character of the story for no reason!'. Now that you've seen her point of view on the situation, (and gotten an insight on her plan) you should be biting your nails to the bone. (But don't really do that—we don't get any profit from this story and therefore are worth nothing in a lawsuit :P)

Chapter 16 is right on its way (we won't keep torturing you loyal readers for much longer) but before we do, we need to ask something of our reviewers:

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE don't leave ANY mentions of ANY episodes that have not yet aired in your reviews or replies! **Rina** and I have made a pact to resist watching the episodes online to prevent ourselves from tainting TAOP with the events of TDWT (which rhymes!). But because the internet is large and all consuming, we do know this: SOMETHING happens between Courtney/Duncan/Gwen that has left several DxC fans in tears. That's LITERALLY all we know. If you guys love TAOP as much as we do, we would so hugely appreciate it if you could do us this monumental favor. You guys are the best fans in the world :D

**From Contemperina: **I'm sorry! I'm very, very sorry that Heather _still_ hasn't participated in any evil, dramatic action! We have been talking it up for so long… But it's official, 100% certain: she's coming next chapter, and it will be great. Or awful, depending on who's side you're on. Pinky promise.

So, if you have the eye for it, there is a ton of parallelism in this chapter! I love parallelism—it's my favorite. Just ask **stray**. But literary devices are boring, so I don't know why I'm even mentioning them. Unless you'd like to go on a scavenger hunt for foreshadowing…

Oh! We (including myself) should all thank **stray** for her fantastic work on the section in Heather's POV! My first draft was a little subdued, a little Courtney-ish… But thankfully, **stray** grabbed the bull by the horns and turned the passage into the _fabulous_ (in my co-authory opinion) peek into Heather's evil, scheming mind that you all just read. I think it's great, really. Heather has such a grasp on conniving and manipulation, it's practically inhuman. O.o And **stray** captured it perfectly. But don't get suspicious, now; she's not evil.

And as was already mentioned, the two of us are, desperately, steadfastly, persistently and consistently, perhaps stupidly watching the TDWT episodes ONLY as they air in the US. So please, no spoilers! We are trying to keep the healthy, love-hate DxC relationship that we all know and love alive, sans any love triangles.

And if you'd feel so inclined, I'm curious: What do you think of Duncan's response, "You're dead wrong" to Courtney calling him pathetic? **Stray** and I have discussed it (i.e. she wrote me a quick note and I agreed with her in my mind), but I'm curious to see what you think of that line.

* * *

Okay! Until next time.

Thanks for reading! Please review (:


	16. Never underestimate the enemy

We've put it off for two chapters now. But, you'll all be happy to know, you're finally on the brink of a majorly dramatic instance: Heather's return!

Big thanks to everyone who's reviewed, and to all of you for being patient with the two of us and our untimely, Heather's-arrival-deterring antics. But, no more! The time has finally arrived, and we are, debatably, more excited for this reveal than you are.

If you'll recall, when we left Duncan, Heather's ride had just pulled up to the dock. And now, we learn his fate…

* * *

**Rule 16: Never underestimate the enemy**

Heather's baleful descent onto the dock was met with nothing short of stunned silence, resounding off everything (or rather, _nothing) _in the entire expanse of Playa, as if the whole resort had been swallowed whole. Nineteen pairs of eyes stared at her, all watching, all waiting, none moving as they strained to see through the darkness as their long-time enemy approached the first layer of the blockade: Duncan.

Crickets were literally chirping. Owls were literally hooting, and somewhere off in the distance, a parrot squawked a merry "_Leshaaaaw-na!_" The only human noises came from the hum of the boat (which shut off a moment later as if in fear) and the muffled blaring from Chef's headphones as Hatchet—_indescribably _happy to be finally rid of Heather— purposely ignored the troupe of ex-campers on the dock, opting instead to go below deck and grab Heather's rather large set of designer matching luggage, leaving everyone in a thick layer of silence. It would have continued on indefinitely had Lindsay not voiced what they were all wondering.

"What's she _wearing_?"

It was nothing more than a whisper, but a whisper sounded like a shout when the rest of the world sounded like a black hole.

As for what Heather _was _wearing, it wasn't that her outfit had changed or was missing an article—rather, something had been added to the fashionista's signature ensemble. The midriff bearing halter top, short shorts, and high heels were all there, but topping them off was a bandana (the same color as the shirts Leshawna had so kindly shredded a few challenges before) that covered her head and kept her dark hair from falling down her back as it always had before.

It was strange, and Beth's reply (also whispered) of "I have _nooo _clue," confirmed the fact that this new look was not to be taken lightly. Before anyone had the chance to question it, however, Heather finished examining her nail and glanced up, pretending to notice the large gathering for the first time.

"Aww, you _guys_! What a generous welcome!" she chirped, silencing the whispers. "It's like a big cast reunion." Her tone reminded Courtney of some long-lost aunt twice-removed come to visit who didn't actually _like _your family; the words were warm in theory, but they came out so sarcastically, it all sounded eerily detached, like a very badly dubbed foreign film. _Icily _evil, one might even say.

Looking right past Duncan, the Queen Bee eyed the crowd of eighteen lined up. (Ezekiel had emerged from hiding, though he was partially hidden behind Bridgette in the line, and Cody had climbed down from the tree, though he was still embracing it protectively.) Examining the myriad of losers in front of her, the scheming portion of Heather's brain couldn't fathom why it had taken her so much effort to get rid of them all; standing before her now—either scowling fiercely or cowering in anticipated terror—they looked as easy to dispose of as a line of plastic dominoes.

Taking a quick second to remove herself from that enraging train of thought, Heather touched her collarbone lightly and continued, still in her falsely amicable tone of voice, "You _all _came out to greet me? That's so sweet!_"_

Then, taking her time to pull her gaze back to the seething delinquent in front of her, she smiled a little more broadly (she had to fight to keep the smile looking eager instead of devious), adding, "And _Duncan. _How good to see you again!" She placed her hands on both his shoulders, squeezing ever so slightly, readying to wrap her arms around his neck. "I hope you didn't miss me _too_mu—"

"Get _off me_," he grunted tonelessly, an unspoken threat left hanging in the air. He watched her hands as they retracted just as smoothly, but he felt nothing—it was like where she touched had gone unnervingly numb. The only thing left to signal the contact that had been was his brain (and even _that _was having difficulty processing through the anger welling up inside him.)

Heather _hmmm_-ed innocently, turning to address the other residents of Playa De Losers. And, because the other campers were so spread out across the entirety of the dock, she briefly zoned in on a chunk of them containing DJ, Courtney, and Trent for a moment before letting her eyes roam elsewhere casually. "Looks like _someone's _regretting what happened in the forest the other night…" she trailed off, shrugging as she kept smiling that fake happy smile.

Courtney latched onto her words and turned to Duncan, front and center on the dock, immediately. "Something _happened _out there?_"_she asked suspiciously.

Duncan swung his gaze over his shoulder just as quickly. Still watching Heather out of the corner of his eye, he snapped, more for his own benefit than Courtney's, "Nothing happened, Princess."

He'd told her that more than twenty times over (_that same day _alone!), yet all it took was one half-sentence from Heather to make Courtney doubt him. Fricking fantastic. It was great to know that he'd utterly wasted an _entire _day of his life—not to mention half a ton of liquid nitrogen and probably just as much laundry detergent.

Heather smirked openly now, tipping her head slightly. "Of _course_," she sighed, emphasizing the word, "I'm sure that's what you want your precious _Princess _to believe, isn't it?"

Duncan had turned back around to glare at Heather but heard Courtney somewhere behind him take a few hesitant steps forward. "…Duncan?" she asked again, demanding a straight answer.

There was the ring of a plea in her words (that neither Duncan nor Courtney herself had expected), and he cast a swift glance behind him again, secretly hoping that Princess could read the assurance in his eyes as he firmly restated, "_Nothing happened_."

Heather deepened her smirk, reaching up to twirl a lock of hair before realizing it wasn't actually there."If you _say _so, Duncan…"

Courtney took another step forward—steadily making her way across the dock—as her gaze darted from Duncan to Heather and back to Duncan, torn over who she could (or _should_) believe. The rest of the campers were doing the same, though _they _were wondering which of the three was going to initiate the inevitable bloodbath.

(Noah, keeping up with his self-assigned role, was rounding up bets again from those closest to him in hushed whispers—though most of the campers had already been cleaned out betting on the earlier pile.)

"I goddamn _say so," _Duncan countered, his words dripping with menace as he twisted back to the girl in front of him. Keeping his own face carefully blank, he looked Heather straight in the eye. "No-thing. _Hap-pened_," he snarled, pronouncing each syllable like Heather was slow—though he knew the reality was quite the opposite. "_You _know it. _I _know it. Just what the _Hell _are you trying to pull?"

Replacing her smirk with a feminine pout (which struck Duncan as malicious, nonetheless) she murmured gently, "Oh, nothing, nothing. I'm just _talking _to you."

She touched her fingers to his shoulder lightly and trailed them down his arm, rising on the balls of her feet to close the already-minimal distance between their torsos. But she wasn't finished yet.

"Really, Duncan," Heather crooned, her breath close to his ear, "a guy like you shouldn't be…_so_…" —She grinned wickedly, where Duncan couldn't see her but Courtney could— "…_**tense**__."_

In any other circumstances, Duncan would have, quite frankly, been _hugely_ turned on by such shameless flirting. But as he was in the company of eighteen others—including Courtney—he was unnaturally _numb _from the ribcage up, and the fact that Heather was perfectly comfy touching him in such intimate ways when he hadn't so much as held Courtney in his _arms _was making his blood boil.

"_DUN__CAN__!_"

Courtney had started crossing the dock to him, glaring viciously at Heather even as she snarled Duncan's name. She hoped the fury in her voice was present enough to mask (but perhaps not quite overpower) the tinge of desperation she found layering those two familiar syllables. She was pissed beyond words—though _who _she was enraged at wasn't really something she was taking into careful consideration. Heather was an evil, manipulating bitch, sure, but… the painful truth knitting her intestines into pretzels remained: there was every possibility that what she was saying could be _true_.

Despite herself, despite all evidence to the contrary and the fact that it was completely against his _modus operandi_, she wanted to watch Duncan whip around and hear him promise that every useless conversation they'd ever had (including the few that actually _included _points) hadn't been a giant waste. Courtney needed to hear that every crude joke he'd ever cracked that she'd secretly found funny, and every cheesy, irrelevant, sometimes sweet pick-up line he'd ever tried on her hadn't been a giant lie—that he hadn't been sleeping around (literally or otherwise) with Heather or anyone else in the last eight weeks.

Unfortunately, she knew she'd have better luck wishing for a unicorn that spoke Japanese. Despite what Duncan was inclined to imply and she was often prone to believe, she wasn't a Princess. She had no right to a perfect world.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, Duncan heard Courtney cross the dock, calling his name. But all his mind could process in that moment was that desperation—subtle and powerful as it was—wasn't supposed to come out of his Princess. It was unnatural, unsettling, and, he realized, one hundred percent Heather's fault.

"You know what? That's _IT!_" he hollered, slapping the raven-haired girl's arm away from him and towering over her like a monster. "I'm _finished _with you and all your fugging tricks!"

"_Tricks_?" Heather questioned, raising her brows in feigned surprise (as she cautiously took a few steps back). "Why, I don't know what you're—"

The casual look on her face broke something inside Duncan. "_SHUT UP__!_" he howled, fully prepared to bash her face in. He pulled back his fist, taking a mental photo of what Heather's features looked like without blood on them.

"Set and _match_," Noah whispered triumphantly to those around him. Tyler quickly handed over a partially eaten candy bar while mashing down Beth's ponytail with the other hand in order to get a better view.

"_Dude!"_

Heather only stared in shock at the delinquent's primed fist (did he seriously think punching something solved _every _problem?) as Geoff and DJ rushed up to restrain him, Courtney in their wake and hurling accusations a mile a minute.

Geoff, who struggled to hold back Duncan's right arm, was trying to tell him to, "Take a deep breath, man! Breathe!" but all Duncan could hear was Courtney behind him screaming, "How _could _you, you traitor! I can't _believe _you would go behind my _back _like that!"

"Dude," DJ grunted, singularly responsible for holding back the rest of the bucking teen, "you need to—" He coughed as Duncan roughly (and unintentionally) elbowed him in the ribs "—_chill!"_

Bridgette had stepped forward as well, though she wasn't as physical as her boyfriend was in stopping the fight. She merely hovered a few steps behind Courtney in case the indignant CIT felt compelled to do something less verbal than go on accusing, "No, wait, I _can _believe it! How could I believe anything _else?_"

"The bitch deserves it!" Duncan shouted back at his friends, still struggling against the grip they had on him.

"And with _Heather_!" Courtney continued yelling, stumbling over the name like it was poisonous. "_I raided Chef's fridge with you! _Does that mean nothing?"

"But socking her in the face, man?" Geoff questioned, barely catching Duncan's fist as it went flying at Heather's nose once more. His cowboy hat had fallen over his eyes, yet he blindly maintained a hold on his friend with the same fervor that he held onto his belief: violence was never the answer. (Unless you were dealing with ravenous coyotes, but that was another situation entirely.)

"She switched the votes and got Courtney booted!" Duncan elaborated, breathing heavily. "And then the _first _thing she does when she gets here is screw with the _one _relationship I've been busting my freaking ass over!" He tried to look at Courtney then, but a massive gorilla (named DJ) blocked his view. He turned back to Geoff, furious. "Now you're trying to tell me she doesn't deserve _at least _a broken nose? _I _say a broken nose is being generous!"

Heather, casually standing in front of the struggle for its entire duration, wore a carefully-crafted look of jaded indifference (once she'd shaken off the surprise). But at Duncan's comment, she scoffed.

"Hey!" Duncan shouted, calling her out with a pointed finger. With a surge of force he scrounged up from his deep reserves of Heather Hatred, he swung his punching arm forward again. (Geoff was nearly thrown over the delinquent's shoulder but managed to hang on and keep him somewhat restrained.) "When I'm done here, you won't be laughing! You won't even be abl—"

"_Easy_, bro," DJ coaxed, pulling Duncan, kicking wildly and spewing out future injuries, back a few more steps from his target.

"Shouldn't someone _do _something?" Sadie asked timidly, trying to hide herself behind Katie—and failing epically—as DJ hefted Duncan back.

"You mean like, help in restraining Duncan?" Justin asked, confused (and already swearing he wasn't going to risk any part of his million dollar body by getting involved in _that _mess.)

"Or help in pummeling Heather!" Leshawna supplied with a glare at the raven haired girl, cracking her knuckles and stepping a little forward. "In which case—I can't believe I'm _saying_ this—but Juvie's got the right idea. For _once_." She was going to start into the fray when she noticed that the red-haired nerd at her side had no blood left in his face. "Harold, hon? What's—?"

Harold blinked slowly and, after clearing his throat nervously, asked, "Did he just…say _Heather _switched the votes?"

"Wait," Lindsay said curiously, her blonde brows furrowed. She leaned across Beth, pointing a dainty finger at Harold. "I thought that was _you!_"

"That _was _Harold," Courtney confirmed, spitting the words out over her shoulder and then returning her attention to Duncan the Bucking Bronco. A shaky breath blew past her lips as she stood there, trembling equally in fury and betrayal, which Bridgette's hand on her shoulder did little to remedy.

Her brain was still trying to process the events of the last few minutes that she, in all her righteous fury, had all but failed to comprehend. Had…Duncan really just been flinging punches at Heather? Sure, Heather _deserved _it (Courtney herself had been extremely tempted to do the same on more than one occasion), but she'd hoped he would have been above that, at least a little bit…

At those three words, however, Duncan whipped his head around to Courtney, falling suspiciously still in DJ's grasp. "_What did ____you__ say_?"

Seeing that her attacker had calmed a bit, Heather grabbed her tailor-made opportunity to stir the drama, refocusing it back where she wanted it. "She said that _Harold _was responsible for her _unreasonable_ removal," she reiterated (though this was news to _her_—she'd never thought the one man geek-squad had something like that in him.) "Isn't that right, _Court_?" she added, chuckling at her use of that pleasant familiarity she didn't actually possess.

Courtney pursed her lips and glowered between Mohawk and bandana, subconsciously floating a bit nearer to Duncan and bringing Bridgette, who seemed attached to her shoulder, along as well.

"So, Duncan," Heather started with a smirk, confident she was only a few deliberate words away from another fabulously clean getaway. "I accept your apology."

"Oh, there are NO apologies for you here," he announced severely, shrugging out of DJ's arms easily since the bigger teen no longer saw him as a direct threat to anyone's physical well being. Then, he whipped back around to face his captors (who doubled as his best buds), Courtney and, a step behind her, Bridgette. "It was the _ginger?" _he asked, the word 'INCREDULOUS' all but stamped across his forehead.

The blonde girl in back nodded halfheartedly while the two boys beside him stood gaping, torn between either hitting the deck or rolling on it in laughter.

After a second or two under Duncan's intense stare, Courtney huffed and cried out, "Oh, for the _love _of…I thought you knew!" holding her arms out in front of her. The two other boys nodded rapidly.

"Well that's just _great_, guys. You '_thought I knew_'," Duncan quoted, sneering. "Because that's _so _freaking helpful right n—!" He pushed past the four teens in front of him, but, upon scanning the layer of lined-up ex-campers (most watching anxiously, some like Eva and Izzy excited for the violence), he saw that Harold was nowhere to be found. Escaped. Gone.

_Hiding._

"What the _Hell!_" Duncan screamed, balling his hands back into fists. "Is there some kind of underground Nerd Revolution going on that I haven't heard about?"

"Look, just—don't _bother_," Courtney instructed, moving out from under Bridgette's hand to grab onto his forearm. "I already got to him." As she said so, she was pulling Duncan back to the few gathered in the middle of the dock—and back around to the reality that _he _wasn't escaping the fact that he owed her both an explanation and an apology. …Didn't he?

If Duncan's brain had been functioning at a hundred percent at the time, he might have chuckled, offered her a high-five, and asked for details on the revenge she'd exacted. Instead, he brushed her off in the harshest of tones, saying, "No offense, Sweetheart, but whatever you did is just a _fraction _of what I can do."

"_Excuse _me?" was the affronted response.

"Well," Heather broke in, strutting past the pair leisurely as the mudslinging commenced, "As much as I'd _love _to stay and watch you two bicker, there's something a _little _more important here requiring my attention."

Taking in Courtney's insults through one ear and Heather's parting words through the other, Duncan threw out an arm to block the evil(er) of the two, simultaneously explaining in the other direction, "Princess! You gotta get it through your hard head: compared to me, _you're a weakling!"_Then, turning back to the grand source of all his problems, he warned darkly, "And just _who _gave you permission to bail? I'm not finished with you yet."

The raven haired girl in question shrugged in a very noncommittal way. "That doesn't actually matter because _I'm _finished with _you_."

Stepping around Duncan's arm as Courtney distracted him once more ("And who said I was finished with _you, _you sexist jackass!"), Heather stalked past the pair and made her way down the line of all the others, who looked on in morbid fascination, pasting on her bestest-best-friend smile when she came to the girl looking on with the most terror of them all.

"Lindsay!" she called, offering a slight wave. "Long time no see, huh? And how are _you_ doing?"

Lindsay very slowly removed her hands from her face (she'd previously convinced herself she was getting slapped) and responded another moment later with a confused "…Good?" It came out sounding like more of a question.

"Great!" Heather said warmly, clasping her hands together as if she were happy to hear the news. "But, tell me _this_, Lindsay," Heather went on, putting on a curious expression, "—do you know how _I'm _doing?"

Even as blonde as Lindsay was, she'd learned better than to take the pleasantries at face value. There was a long pause as she chose her careful response. "…No?"

"_NOT _GREAT!" Heather screeched, dropping all false personas and putting her former-minion under vicious fire. "I was sent to this goddamned place because of you! _You!"_

To those watching, it looked like Heather was seriously considering choking the poor, trembling thing. With each exclamation, she stabbed a finger at Lindsay's throat, making sharp contact each time. "No voting! No bonfire! Not even the freaking, fat-tastic marshmallows! None of it! And it's _all your fault!"_

Beth ran over then and offered her friend, nearly dissolved to tears, a tight hug. "What did _she _do?" Beth demanded as Lindsay straightened up with a gulp, still quivering.

"Does 'get your head shaved by Chef' sound familiar at all?" Heather asked fiercely, raising her eyebrows while keeping her eyes just as angry as before. "As a _dare_, maybe?"

"Ohhhhh," Lindsay mumbled, finger-combing her hair sheepishly and avoiding Heather's flaming eyes. "That _was _me, wasn't it?"

A few people down the line, Cody was unfortunately unable to restrain a single snort of laughter at the irony. Heather's glare swerved to him faster than racecar headlights, but before her attention could be diverted completely, Eva lifted him up by the collar of his shirt. He gulped audibly as Heather returned her attention to Beth, but to his surprise, Eva merely whispered in his ear, "Ain't karma the best?" snickering darkly herself. Cody nodded his head eagerly in response as the muscular girl put him back down, and he thanked his lucky stars he wasn't going to be the second victim of the day.

"You're jus-_th _mad because she out-_th_marted you!" Beth accused, jumping to Lindsay's defense because Lindsay was incapable of doing so herself. She hugged her much taller friend tighter. "You couldn't do the dare, could you?"

"OH, I _did _the—!" Heather started vehemently, her voice so loud it broke on the 'did', but she caught herself barely in time, hurrying to amend in a suitably defeated voice, "No. I couldn't do it."

It was that split second of indecision—and its drastic change from screech to simper—that pulled Courtney's attention from her disagreement with Duncan to the conflict behind her. It was something so incredibly un-Heatherish that she actually _forgot_ the accusation she'd been lining up at Duncan, brilliant as it had been. (Something along the lines of sewage having more table manners than he did.)

"Wait a second. You _couldn't _do the dare?" she prodded, asking for confirmation as she cautiously turned from Duncan and strode across the planks to where Heather stood with her ex-flunkies, an official CIT air surrounding her. "And that's what got you got sent here?"

Duncan stared on in confusion (had Courtney really just abandoned him _mid-argument _to go talk to _Heather?_) at the two girls, not having a clue what Courtney could be up to but suspecting something was brewing for sure. After all: he wasn't dense. He _knew_ those two had never been friends, and unless they'd done some girl-telepathy thing and decided to forget the entire past five minutes completely, they had _beef_.

But, in what he considered to be a fantastically selfless act of not being sexist (okay, _fine,_ he was praying for a catfight with the same fervor as the nine other guys behind him), he decided to let Courtney do whatever she was going to do without interference.

"_No," _Heather spat, as she too turned to meet the counselor's approach. "I left because, all of a sudden, I just didn't _want _the hundred thousand dollars anymore." She rolled her eyes, coating her voice with yet _another _layer of sarcasm. "I decided after seven and a half weeks of bunnies and rainbows and _Chris _that the show was just _way_ too easy for me and I'd have better luck earning the money with a _job. OF COURSE _that's what got me sent here!" she finished with a glare.

Courtney briefly scrunched up her nose in distaste at the extremity of Heather's tone (bitter much?) but let it pass a moment later when she realized it could only _fuel_ her sneaking suspicion that Heather had something to hide. "Naturally," she acknowledged. "How silly of me…

"Oh well. At least you still have your hair!" she continued easily, masking the contained question with optimism. Courtney was running with just the _slightest_ vibe she'd picked up on but had promptly decided to investigate. If Heather had something to hide, the rest of them had a right to know. And if she could be the one to permanently smear Miss Popularity's reputation—well then, it was more than fitting recompense.

Heather clenched her teeth together. "Right," she ground out. "_At least _I have my hair."

"I'm rather surprised at you, actually," Courtney went on innocently, shrugging her shoulders. "You _never _struck me as the kind of person to let something as medial as _hair _stand in your way."

"I _didn't_!" Heather revised sharply, unable to stand the obvious crack at her reputation. Her eyes widened slightly in realization, however, as the words fell out of her mouth.

Courtney picked up on it like a shark on blood—or, more fittingly, a politician on dirt. "You…_didn't_?" she asked curiously as she leant in a bit closer to squint at the pink bandana. "But you _do _still have your hair, _don't you? _How could you _possibly _have pulled that off?_"_

Heather glared ferociously at her, desperately trying to keep up her casually disinterested façade. "I'm just that good," she replied, confidently as she could.

But on the inside: _Panic_. Heather was feeling it, and that was _so_ not okay. Courtney had weaseled herself too close to the root of the issue for comfort, which meant that something needed to be done, _fast_. She could feel nineteen sets of eyes on her and could hear the soft rumble of the campers' indistinct conversation. If they found out she was… Heather almost shuddered but managed to keep her poise. It was way too shameful to even think about.

"Or maybe there's a reason you're wearing that make-shift bandana!" Courtney pointed out as if Heather hadn't spoken. She was picking up steam and inching closer, no longer looking just innocently curious, if the flicker of a smirk on her lips was any indication. "Maybe you're hiding something under there, like _perhaps _the fact that—"

Realizing that the only way to shut Courtney up (the best way to shut _most _people up, really) was to fling an accusation of her own, Heather forced her nerves to settle into steel, rolling her eyes once more before taking aim—and firing.

"Oh, get over yourself, _Princess," _the Queen Bee sneered, eyeing the enemy. "You're just jealous I got more from your _boy candy _that night than you _ever _will."

The dock, previously filled with speculation over whether or not Courtney was on to something, was covered with an instant silence, brand: "_I can't believe she just said that__!_" Most notably, Duncan stood so frozen he could have been a statue. Courtney all but stopped breathing; she was _sure _there was no blood left in her face.

Riding an instinct she couldn't explain, the prim and proper CIT glanced over her shoulder to the rebellious boy she'd left behind less than a minute previously, entertaining thoughts of how ridiculous his violent tendencies were. His blank gaze met hers, as did the stares of every single other camper—and Courtney dully registered that her face mirrored all of theirs.

A second's decision later, Courtney found herself sending a quick prayer to God (to not spite her for being the hypocrite she was about to become) as she shrieked and launched herself at Heather with the full intention of knocking her unconscious.

Through her anger, she briefly wondered why no one had killed Heather sooner.

"_Take that back!" _Courtney screeched, colliding with Heather and sending them both skidding across the dock, completely set on clawing the girl's eyes out of their sockets.

_"_Get _off me, _you _bitch!_" Heather howled back, grabbing a fistful of Courtney's hair and simultaneously kneeing her in the gut.

Geoff and Duncan's reflexes kicked in at that time, sending them sprinting. Duncan wrestled a firm grip on Courtney from behind and lifted the violently vengeful girl off Heather, leaving Geoff to catch Courtney's victim before she flung herself back at her attacker. DJ, on the other hand, had darted back over to the Boat of Losers and was trying to talk Chef, who'd just deposited Heather's numerous bags on the dock, out of murdering all the ex-campers on the spot for fighting without him being present—and for being "obnoxious riffraff" in general.

"LET _GO_ OF ME!" Courtney screamed, struggling to break from Duncan's firm grasp. But Duncan seemed to have some experience in the area, easily adjusting his position to pin both her arms to her sides as he held her off the ground around the waist in a bear hug vice.

"Hey, now that's not _fair__, _babe," he whispered low in her ear, chuckling despite himself. "If _I'm _not allowed to punch her in the face, no one is."

Courtney ignored him. "You are _SO _out of line!" she shouted back at Heather, who had calmed down enough to give her the finger.

Kicking Geoff in the nuts and strutting away without a backwards glance, the Queen Bee stalked over to her newest enemy (still restrained by Duncan) and got right up in her face, practically exploding with insults unsaid.

The words that came next, however, paralyzed the combatants and surprised everyone—and they came from the loudest sister Canada had ever known.

"Oh my _Lord!" _Leshawna balked, pointing._"_What on Earth happened to your _hair__?_"

"My… hair?" Heather squeaked, a second delayed. She threw her hands up to her scalp and screeched upon realizing that her bandana was nowhere to be found.

"_SHE'S BALD!"_

Everyone reacted differently to the great reveal, some (like Heather's ex-flunkies) with uproarious laughter; others, who were a bit more on the fence about openly upsetting Heather, with gaping stares. It wasn't because Heather was merely _bald—_though that would have been hilarious as well. Some of her hair was left among the bald patches, sticking out at odd angles and producing an effect not unlike someone who'd been thrown in a pool, electrocuted, run through a carwash, and then struck by lightning. Twice.

Courtney failed to find the humor in this, however, breathing hard and still red in the face. Feeling nothing more than the ghost of what would have been satisfaction, she wrestled out of Duncan's slackened grip and dropped to the ground. Roughly shoving her way between Trent and Justin (both laughing so hard they didn't even notice), Courtney stomped off to bed without a backwards glance.

"Princess!" Duncan choked out between guffaws (Heather was _bald? _It was like the highlight of his life!) "Wait up!"

He made to go after her, but Bridgette appeared (seemingly from nowhere. Man, that girl had skill) and blocked his path, her face sporting nothing more than a concerned frown. "Duncan," she said, "following her _really _wouldn't be a good idea right now."

"I need to talk to her," he explained simply, maneuvering around the surfer and taking a few more steps toward the resort.

"Don't, Duncan. _Don't."_

The words weren't angry, nor were they overly commanding. They were soft, peaceful, as was the way of Bridgette. Feasibly, Duncan could have kept on trekking, pretending he hadn't heard them at all, and no one would have called him out for it. There was something in those four syllables, however, that told him to stop moving, turn around, and give Malibu a chance.

So he did.

With a deep sincerity, Bridgette continued. "Just trust me," she sighed. "Courtney's going to need a minute." Duncan opened his mouth to respond that sure, he could give her a minute, but the girl pressed on. "And _then, _after a minute, she's going to need a friend to talk to." Duncan shot her an annoyed look implying that _he _could be a friend as well. (Whether that was true or not wasn't determined.) "A _female _friend," Bridgette elaborated, her concerned look momentarily narrowing a bit to get her point across. "I'm sure she's not proud of what just happened. She's going to need some time to gain back the pride she left on the dock, Duncan. Okay?"

After another second of giving Bridgette the stink eye (he knew—_knew!—_she was right, but he didn't want to admit it aloud for fear of someone hearing), Duncan turned away with a heavy groan but not another word, his gleeful high at the discovery of Heather's new hairstyle all but evaporated.

He opted to walk over to Geoff and help him up from where he'd fallen after Heather's especially low blow. Geoff wheezed out a thanks, but Duncan didn't bother acknowledging it. Instead, he stalked over to where Chef had dropped off Heather's bags and, after making sure the girl was watching, he kicked every last designer suitcase into the murky water.

Duncan had been expecting Heather's indignant cry, so the shriek that pierced through the dark didn't even startle him as he made his way back toward the main building. Ignoring the rest of the world around him, he chose instead to start listing off the people he needed to punish and all the reasons why. Heather: there was no point trying to count all the motives for hating her because they wouldn't even fit in his brain. And Harold: for getting Courtney kicked off and being an annoying dweeb in general.

It needed to be done, so Duncan would make it happen. The only things occupying his thoughts as he stripped down to his boxers and threw himself into bed were the two all-important questions: _What? _and _How?_

_

* * *

_

A set up for more drama? That's got to be pushing some sort of limit.

And now___, _some ridiculously long-winded notes from your two co-authors, which demonstrate how very devoted we are to this fandom:

**From strayphoenix: **How's THAT for Total Drama? Huh? We can keep people thoroughly entertained, irrevocably in love, anxiously anticipating, and totally dedicated WHILE STILL BEING TRUE TO CHARACTER! BOOYAH! Take THAT World Tour!

*blows raspberry*

WOW, that felt empowering :D. Just coincidence that our latest and most drama infused chapter of all time comes right after the DxC fallout airs on TV? Um, yes, actually. **Rina** mentioned something to me in a PM that I thought was really fitting and truly encompassed what TAOP is all about to us, the writers, and you guys, the awesome reviewers: It's essentially become a passive rebellion against the last two seasons of Total Drama. THIS is where the heart of the show lives, writers. In the characters we got to know and love in those first 8 weeks. I think it's the universal sentiment that nothing since then has quite lived up to it. So yeah, "Greece's Pieces/Ex-Files" and beyond. Anything you throw at us we can—and WILL—do better! Because we'll ALWAYS have Playa ;)

A few quick comments on the chapter itself: Again, LOVE writing for Heather. Don't ask me why because I couldn't give you an answer that doesn't ship me off to a mental ward. Which totally can't happen because I have to be around to write this story :P. Props to **Rina** for organizing and writing the bulk of both this chapter AND the last while I was off gallivanting during my summer. She needs to stop being so modest :). And as a bonus for your patience, we've included a little side story that came to me in a DREAM of all places. I was probably stressing about TDWT and TAOP before going to bed and my brain came up with this really random dream to give me some peace of mind regarding writing TAOP in light of the events of TDWT. So enjoy!

Finally, for those interested, a song that I came across when I started editing this chapter that stuck so PERFECTLY to the plotline that I had it on repeat for the rest of the editing process is "I Know About You" by Dashboard Confessional. Just the first few lines should make the connection obvious.

Enjoy!

**From Contemperina: **Taking **stray**'s dream into account, this A/N is already about 20 times longer than it should be, even for _our_ standards, so I shall keep this brief: I love this chapter. I hope you love it too.  
I'm particularly fond of the catfight myself, satisfied with how it turned out—almost so you can really see it happening I'd hope (: Especially considering the events of TDWT…if you substitute Heather for either Gwen OR Duncan… (As **stray** sort of mentioned, we've seen up to the "Ex-Files". So feel free to discuss away when it comes to anything up to that episode.)

Short, sweet, to the point. And full of adoration for all of you who've stuck around to read these words! Probably in hopes of seeing **stray**'s dream. Which is one of the best things I've heard in a while, I must admit.

* * *

Now presenting, STRAY'S TOTAL DRAMA-RIFIC DREAM!

(Rina, stray, and the entirety of Playa De Losers are sitting around in lawn chairs watching TDWT which, by some miraculous space/time flux, has managed to break the fourth wall and land in the past.)

Courtney: *fuming* I can't believe this crap! They call this television?

Cody: *wrinkling his nose* Seriously, it's like the revenge of the crack fanfiction writers.

Duncan: *red in the face, so ridiculously pissed he can't even speak*

Rina: Guys, guys, calm down! That's never going to happen here!

Leshawna: And how would _you _know?

stray: See, there's one important difference that separates _that_ *gags* and _this._

Lindsay: *raising her hand* You guys aren't going to cut your hair? [Note: stray, at this point, has recently cut her hair.]

Rina: …What? No!

Heather: *bitter* My character isn't pathetically watered down during the second season?

stray: Well, um…

Bridgette: *in Geoff's arms, also angry* Geoff and I are going to retain _something_ that _might_ resemble a _personality_ separate from each other?

Geoff: Hey!

Rina: That might actually—

Courtney: *glaring in the general direction of Wawanakwa—and Gwen* You're going to immediately kill off _some _characters so they don't even make it to season 3?

stray: No! Guys, it's much simpler than that. *talking like a scientist in a public education announcement* There's one thing that sets off most of the second season drama and the horrendous scripting (and triangle) of World Tour.

Rina: *confident* There was _one_ thing that happens that triggers that whole chain of events. And we're going to avoid it at _all costs _in our perfect reality.

Everyone: *annoyed* What?

stray and Rina: *proudly* _Trent never goes crazy._

*all eyes immediately dart to Trent—who is wearing a black leather jacket, dark Schwarzenegger sunglasses, and cocking a shotgun in one hand*

Trent: *calmly gives Duncan the universal symbol for _'I'm watching you, punk'_*

Duncan: *grumbling and burying his face in his hands* Have I reached my daily quota for proclaiming how much I hate this show yet?

Courtney: Not yet, dear.

Duncan: _I F*CKING HATE THIS SHOW!_

Zeke: *from somewhere in the back, confused* …I don't get it. Where does the music come from?

* * *

Think about it… Think about it some more…

AH-HAH!

Thanks for reading! Please review (:


	17. Never think past midnight

Today... is a special day. Why? Because it's Contempephoenix's one year anniversary! Woohoo! That's right, guys. We've been writing together for one year exactly. More on that later.

If you'll recall, when we left Duncan, Bridgette had just intercepted Duncan on his way to intercepting Courtney on HER way to her room and away from her catfight with Heather. And now, we learn his fate…

* * *

_**Rule 17: Never think past midnight**_

Not surprisingly, a fiercely independent nature will prevent you from having a best friend for most of your life, and Courtney, forever rule abiding (whether she liked it or not), was no exception to this unwritten law. She'd been informed on more than one occasion that her face's neutral expression typically read something along the lines of '_Touch me and DIE_' (the individuals who told her this were immediately introduced to her verbal and/or physical wrath). So naturally, Courtney had gotten used to working out problems by herself, _for _herself, if for no other reason than to prove to everyone that her lack of real friends was quite her own conscious decision.

She didn't _need_ to trust anyone else. She didn't _want_ anyone else to confide in. Courtney was absolutely capable of and perfectly _happy_ functioning in a state of copacetic detachment. So _why_, she asked herself once again, was she having a pow-wow in Bridgette's room instead of a pity party in her own?

In her mind, Courtney had already formatted what seemed like a viable explanation for her atypical behavior: Not only did Bridgette possess enough reserves of patience for several dozens of people (a lucky thing, since Courtney generally consumed approximately half those reserves), but the blonde, in Courtney's educated opinion, had the unobtainable skill of reading other people quite well—maybe better than the CIT herself could, which was a difficult thing for the perfectionist to admit.

Perhaps it came from years of waiting for those 'killer' waves to surface and casual people-watching in the meantime. Or maybe it was all the summers working at the surf shack, dealing with the equally difficult beach-raised bone-heads and day-tripping tourists. But no matter where it hailed from, Bridgette had managed to hone her people skills to almost superhuman levels, in ways Courtney was far too intolerant to ever attempt.

But _not_ too oblivious to ignore.

"Can the earth just open up and swallow me?" she asked with a sigh from where she sat on Bridgette's bed, a pillow sandwiched between her legs and chest. "Is that even _feasible_? Is Muskoka on any fault lines?"

"Not that I know of," the brunette heard Bridgette reply from the bathroom, voice slightly distorted by the soft crashing of the water in the sink and its echo off the marble. "But geography's never really been my thing."

Courtney sighed again, more deeply this time, and leant her head back against the headboard. Just because it was impossible didn't keep her from hoping she alone could will it into existence. Ordinarily, Courtney was violently opposed to moping in any way, shape, or form. It was a sign of weakness, after all—right along with admitting your _feelings _aloud and not being able to beat a boy at _arm wrestling_. But once pushed off her mental pedestal, she found it psychologically beneficial to wallow indefinitely in the depths of her wretched misery before purging it from her system altogether and getting back on her high horse.

Or, in this distinct case, allowing someone else to help her up.

"All right, Courtney," Bridgette began, solemnly handing the girl the glass of tap water she'd requested like she was handing over the secret key to life. Acknowledging her friend's mumbled half-thank you as she drank, the surfer hopped onto the foot of her bed, sending reverberations across the mattress and earning her a stern looking from Courtney (which was ignored). "This is what we're gonna do."

Wiggling around a bit before crossing her legs, she looked Courtney square in the eye with the expression of a concerned parent, and with good reason; the way the brunette sat on the other end of the bed—hair a mess, fluffy pillow crushed between her legs and torso, back pitifully slumped against the headboard—would have concerned _any _half decent parent and any fully-decent friend.

"Before we get into that though, I have something to ask you," Bridgette told her, sitting up tall to meet the brunette's skeptical look. "An important question. Like, the fate of this whole_conversation_ rides on this question. So really, if we don't talk about this first, then whatever comes after will…"

The CIT tuned out of her friend's rambling despite herself, dismally sipping at her water. It wasn't that she didn't _want _to listen to Bridgette (she totally did!), just that Bridgette's tangent had lost all verbal power—and therefore was deprived of the vocal tone Courtney had been programmed by _years_ of obeying authority to pay rapt attention to.

But when the rambling stopped after, "So yeah. _Important. _Will you promise to answer it honestly?" Courtney paused her internalized curses towards Heather and Duncan and her own self-bereavement at her loss of control, returning her attention to the blonde.

She offered a dejected, "Sure," unable to bring herself to respond with any more enthusiasm.

Bridgette's bright eyes zoned in on her even in the dimmed lights, earnest and sincere. "Do you trust me?"

"Of course," Courtney responded, mostly on autopilot, the words falling out of her mouth with an unintended 'Um, _duh' _tone. That question fell into the same category as "_Can I tell you a secret_?" or "_Does this make me look fat_?" Acceptable answers were few and far between.

To her surprise, Bridgette shook her head. "No, I don't want your rehearsed answer. I want the real one." She still hadn't broken eye contact. It was making Courtney squeamish. "So take a second to think about it if you have to—that's fine. But if you can't be honest about _trust_, we're not getting anywhere."

Courtney opened her mouth to reassert her infallible trust in her friend, but Bridgette repeated herself before Courtney could. "Do you _trust_ me?"

To the CIT's personal astonishment upon first meeting the clumsy, easy-going surfer girl, she'd discovered that Bridgette knew exactly how to speak to make Courtney think. Impossibly_, _even back in their early days at Camp Drama-nakwa, Bridgette's people skills had somehow extended to handling hard-headed, driven future politicians _à la _Courtney. So, in response to Bridgette's open question, Courtney furrowed her brows, closed her eyes, and thought back to day one.

Courtney's opinion of the other had taken off to unequivocally rocky beginnings. Following a decidedly neutral first impression, the violinist's second opinion had been decidedly _negative _over Bridgette's accidental (yet still _complete_) destruction of her violin during the talent show.

Definitely no trust there.

And while she'd pointedly tried to ignore the surfer girl throughout the dismal camping challenge that followed, Bridgette, sensing a chance at recompense, had offered to help Courtney set up her tent with a simple, "Not that you need it, but would you like a hand?"

Courtney, understandably edgy since the start of the challenge—she was tired, starving, and Duncan's immature, sexist jokes weren't helped matters _at all_—had been about to snap at her teammate that she didn't _need _anyone's help when she caught herself, realizing Bridgette had said _just_ that. Slightly wary, she'd allowed the girl to help her set up their tent. So perhaps that indicated a slight degree of trust, as well as some serious skill on Bridgette's side. Talking to Courtney wasn't easy; making her actually _listen_ when she didn't want to was a miracle on par with the parting of the Red Sea.

Of course, any trust was instantly unraveled when Bridgette set the tent they'd spent the evening setting up on _fire_.

Yet three days later, when Courtney couldn't face her greatest fear and win the victory her team so desperately needed, she'd found herself filled with self-loathing. Accordingly, she had decided to go vent such highly personal, image-slaughtering things to the Confessional because she trusted no one at camp and therefore had no one to talk to. Some would have called it pathetic; she called it autonomous.

Bridgette had been on her way down to the beach, ready to do some hard thinking about her own failure, when she passed the Confessional and heard Courtney's muffled sobs. Now, Bridgette wasn't generally nosy. She tried not to interfere in the business of others under the belief that everyone deserved their own space. Yet, completely on impulse, she pushed open the door to the stall and was stunned to find the usually über-confident Courtney distraught, quickly wiping at her tears. Gently tugging the startled and stubborn CIT from the stall on that same impulse, Bridgette lead her in the direction of the Bass cabin with a determination Courtney had never seen in _anyone _her own age (besides herself).

"C'mon," was all Bridgette had said as she grabbed Courtney's wrist. "You _don't _want to do this here." Courtney was impressed enough by the strength of her teammate's strange sort of self righteous resolve to obey.

Or maybe it was trust.

Once inside, sitting Indian-style on the carpet across from each other in their dingy, wooden quarters, Bridgette instructed her to pick up on her train of thought exactly where she'd left off. Highly reluctant (who on earth did this girl think she _was_? Dr. Phil?), but morally unable to blow off the blonde's random act of kindness, Courtney offered an abridged, watered down, noncommittal version of her thoughts. Because really, was she expected to tell this stranger her life story? Her most intimate musings? The deepest, darkest hopes and fears of her soul? Of _course_ not. She'd never revealed such things to anyone, teammate or not, nor did she have any plans to, _ever_. In Courtney's world, it was weakness of character.

But then, to her great shock, Bridgette took her turn. She spoke to Courtney as if the two had known each other all their lives instead of just a few short weeks. She talked about how utterly abandoned she'd felt in the woods, how pathetic she'd felt running out of them, how helpless this game and its sick game master made her feel. She shared her concerns regarding the food Chef made and explained her stand on being a vegetarian. She mused on how mean that dark-haired girl seemed (her name was Heather, right?) and how cute she thought Geoff was. And eventually, after witnessing Bridgette's immense degree of honesty, Courtney decided that _maybe_ the world wouldn't explode instantaneously if she decided to return the favor.

To her surprise, it felt kind of nice, sitting there in the cabins, talking for the next couple of hours about everything under the sun. Bridgette turned out to be a fantastic listener and a great storyteller besides, and for the first time in her life, Courtney found herself honestly _talking_ to another person—not manipulating, not merely being courteous—trusting something in Bridgette's sea-foam green eyes. Trusting the surfer would be the only one to hear her words and would take them to her (more than likely accidental) grave.

That evening, when Courtney had miraculously received the last marshmallow of the night, she and Bridgette stuck around as the rest of the campers departed, roasting their marshmallows together in victory, throwing around theories as to who could have cast votes against them. (They also discussed all the ways to kill these individuals and make it look like an accident—or at least Courtney did.)

And, sometime among this chatter, interspersed between the jokes, theories, the personal confessions, Courtney realized she would trust Bridgette with her life—or at least her marshmallows.

So when Bridgette intercepted Courtney, stalking from the poolside war to her safety zone of a bedroom, with that same look in her eye—the look she'd given Courtney all those weeks ago when she'd found her crying in the confessional—the CIT knew better than to argue. She'd allowed the surfer to guide her to a place suitable for the girl talk they were presently engaged in.

"I trust you, Bridgette," the brunette elaborated finally, opening her eyes to see Bridgette presently sitting across the bed from her. It was a strange thing to admit aloud. "I'd trust you with my life," she mumbled additionally, dropping her eyes from her friend's gaze. She was ashamed only that it had taken her so long to realize it.

Courtney looked back up to see Bridgette breaking into a bright smile. The very next thing the future politician knew, her vision was completely obscured by blonde hair and blue hoodie as Bridgette shot across the bed, enveloping her startled friend in what was, quite possibly, the first real hug she'd received (and reciprocated) since leaving home seven weeks prior.

"I know you do," Bridgette admitted, releasing Courtney after one more squeeze and bouncing back to her end of the bed. Arranging her legs into a comfortable position, Bridgette straightened out the dolphin print boxer briefs she slept in and tightened the hood of her sweater so it acted as a scarf around her neck (though how _anyone _could still be cold in the insane heat of their hotel was beyond Courtney's comprehension.)

Courtney tried to form an indignant expression, but Bridgette's immeasurable happiness at her confession had Courtney's mouth pulling into a smile as well. "Then why did you _ask_ me?" she asked between Bridgette's giggles, which she found herself dangerously close to catching.

"I had to make you say it," Bridgette explained, still beaming. She took a moment to fight down her giggles and then, in the sudden silence that followed, said, "That's what makes it real."

The room was quiet for a moment as Courtney found herself at a loss for words. Bridgette, however, seeing as everything was going according to plan, was not. "Okay," she said, in a tone somewhere between the seriousness with which she'd begun and the unbridled happiness she'd just expressed. "You leveled with me about Duncan, right?"

She gazed at Courtney as one might analyze a curious looking animal, wondering if it would run or attack. The curious looking Courtney across from her did, of course, neither, instead nodding in agreement and sipping more water. Bridgette went on. "Now that we've gotten all _that_ out of the way, I'm going to return the favor."

Courtney glanced at her friend over the top of her water glass in skepticism. (After all, trusting Bridgette wasn't the same as thinking she was right.) Bringing the glass down slowly from her lips, she raised an eyebrow at her best friend. "You're…going to level with me?" she repeated, wondering if she'd heard wrong. "About…Duncan?"

Bridgette nodded once. "Mhmm. And I'm going to _trust _you to listen."

"But…_you _plan on telling _me_…about _Duncan_?" Courtney asked again quizzically. The puzzlement overwhelmed the bonding moment; the words sounded so _strange_ to her (even though she'd heard them twice already), she thought something rather large must have gotten stuck in her ears. Her inner CIT immediately trying to claim what was rightfully hers, she started, "Bridge, not that I don't appreciate your input on all things bearing a green Mohawk—because I do, _tremendously_—but don't you think I know a _little_ more about how he operates than you? You barely even talk to him," she pointed out. "How are you even remotely _qualified?_"

At that, Bridgette deflated slightly. She'd been riding on the high she'd gotten from being deemed trustworthy, but the time had come to stop being a therapist and start being a friend. Slipping back into her surfer breeze, she explained, "Because I understand how guys work." She blew a blonde bang out of her face, which settled right back into place. "Or at least, I understand them better than most girls seem to," she specified. She left out the part of Courtney being grouped under that particular heading.

The brunette barely held back her snort of disbelief. "Please, I _know _how guys work, Bridgette," she insisted stiffly. "They're shallow, insensitive pigs who only have interest in following what their hormones tell them to: big boobs and make-up caked faces."

Bridgette had opened her mouth to reply, but Courtney rushed to add challengingly, "Do you deny it?" slamming her glass into her open palm as if it were her fist—and ending up surprised when almost all of its contents sloshed out onto her lap.

"Well, no, that's pretty accurate for the stereotype…" Bridgette half-mumbled, not verbally acknowledging the mess Courtney had made on her bed but handing over a random garment of clothing hanging from a bedpost to act as a towel anyway. She picked up her voice to add, "But it _really_ depends on the guy. See, it's like—"

"If this is going to be another crab analogy, can it _please_ wait till morning?" Courtney implored, tipping her glass completely upside-down to get at the last remaining droplets. "I can really only handle one analogy per day, and your crabs are still spinning me in circles," she admitted, hugging the (slightly moist) pillow she still squeezed between her legs and chest.

"I can keep it comparison free," Bridgette promised. "But I _do_ have some thoughts on this Heather thing," she said, scooting closer to her friend, the latter tensing up at the mention of the incident that had occurred not an hour prior.

"Puh-lease," Courtney insisted, rolling her eyes in a way that was so obviously faked, it would have been insulting to anyone other than the blonde surfer opposite her. "I'm _so _over that harpy and her conniving, evil, bottomless, black hole of heart…" she continued, clutching at her empty drinking glass fiercely and glaring at its lack of liquid.

Bridgette tactfully pulled it from her hands and bent over backwards to set it on the floor below her. "Look, what she said was _not okay,_" she asserted, reminding Courtney that she was on her side as any good friend would have been. "You had _every_ reason to attempt to claw her eyes out." Then, in a mutter just _barely_ audible: "I might've actually advised you to pull her hair harder if she _had_ the hair to pull…" Courtney smiled slightly, and Bridgette, inspired, continued. "But you should _trust_ me when I say you don't have anything to worry about when it comes to her and Duncan."

Courtney's smile faded almost immediately. "You don't know what you're talking about," she grumbled, staring across the room at the bathroom door for no reason other than to avoid eye contact. Sure, she _wanted _to believe Bridgette's words—that there was no risk of Duncan and Heather ever getting together or even finding each other remotely _tolerable—_but her sensible half knew better than to dismiss all her worries.

Upon realizing that she had worries at _all_, Courtney released a sound most easily described as a whimper, feeling herself plummeting into even deeper wallowing at the discovery. She wasn't supposed to be _worried _about this. About Duncan, or Heather, or Duncan _and _Heather! Worrying meant caring, and caring meant having a problem with Duncan and Heather being together, and what was _that_ supposed to mean?

No. That was wrong. Courtney's momentary depression wasn't about Duncan at all. It was about how she'd lost control and attacked Heather for a comment that just _happened_ to be Duncan-related. This was a matter of pride and self-control, pure and simple. Nothing more.

Luckily, Bridgette was too distracted to pick up on this train of thought. Having previously realized that she needed more than _just_ trust to convince Courtney of her point, she decided to turn to logic. So, feeling like she was having a job interview instead of a heart to heart with her best friend, she began listing off her qualifications when it came to understanding the Duncan/Heather dynamic. "Court, I had a Hot Wheels collection that was the envy of the entire playground before I ever laid my hands on a tube of lip gloss. Still only own one of those… the one _you_ gave me, actually, after that awful Boney Island canoe challenge."

As if to demonstrate, Bridgette reached into her hoodie pocket and pulled out said tube of nude shade lip gloss, which had _barely _been started, along with a gum wrapper, a washed movie ticket stub, and a shell she remembered picking up a couple weeks ago because it looked kind of cool. Courtney raised an eyebrow at the contents (how long had all _that_ been in there?), but the surfer just shrugged at her friend's look, tossing the extra junk behind her in the general direction of her garbage can.

She re-pocketed the small tube, informing Courtney, "Basically, I've been best friends with guys all my life. And, while being friends with guys is super awesome and mega chill, it requires putting up with a _lot _of BSing. A _LOT _of BSing," Bridgette repeated for emphasis, huffing. "It's like, sometimes they try _so_ hard to be such huge jerks in front of their friends, you can just _tell_ they're laying it on way too thick.

"I mean, I hardly had a single girlfriend till I met you guys here on the island!" she added. Bridgette ran a hand through her hair, staring off into the corner of her room with a rueful smile, as if she still couldn't believe it herself. She went on, explaining, "I'd always heard about the horrible things girls were capable of doing to each other, but only from TV shows and stories I got from the girlfriends of my guyfriends.I hadn't experienced any of it firsthand, so Heather was, you know… a shock."

Courtney, unable to help herself (and no longer in possession of her glass of water to distract her), opened her mouth to indicate that Bridgette was proving her point exactly—that she didn't know a thing about either Duncan _or _Heather—but Bridgette went on before she got any words out. "_So_, _because_ I had no clue what was going on, Gwen and Leshawna gave me a crash course when the teams merged on the show. A very lengthy and detailed one, I'd say, made up of their own experiences with her and all girls like her."

Bridgette scooted over all the way now to sit beside Courtney up against the headboard, mimicking her friend's position. Staring straight ahead, yet sure she had Courtney's full attention, she stated, "_Believe_ me when I say that you don't have to worry about Duncan and Heather doing anything but ripping each other's throats out."

Appeased with the qualifications but not with the bottom line, Courtney frowned and asked, because she needed to be _sure_, "I don't understand how you can be so damn _positive _just because you grew up with simple guys and got a lesson on a shallow girl from some other shallow girls."

"But that's the thing, Courtney," Bridgette insisted. "Duncan's not _like _those simple guys, and Heather's anything _but_ a shallow girl! And Gwen and Leshawna aren't shallow either, but I guess that's not really the point…" she added as an afterthought. Miming assembling an explosive with her hands (or what she _thought_ looked like assembling an explosive), she went on, "Put the two of them together in any situation, sexually charged or otherwise, and you're gonna get _exactly _what we saw down there on the dock: chaos and hate. It's like putting a match to gunpowder!"

"I don't know, Bridgette…" the brunette sighed, flipping through all her Duncan memories (of which there were _way _too many). Looking back at her time on Wawanakwa, she could think of at least _two _times that he'd sidled up to each girl in camp, teammate or enemy, the only exceptions being those he'd deemed below his superficial standards. Whether it was a teasing remark this way or an inappropriate glance the other, he seemed to have tested all the waters before resigning himself to torturing _her _out of boredom. (This was what she told herself had happened, anyway, because not much else made sense.)

A few seconds passed before Courtney realized that Bridgette was talking again and zoned back in accordingly.

"It's like, what defines them is the fact that you can't predict either of them!" she was reiterating. Here, Bridgette threw her hands up in a very Courtney-like manner. (She was pretty sure the habit had rubbed off.) "I mean, Duncan could just as easily shake your hand as break your arm, just for laughs! And you can never figure out what Heather's thinking because she's only thinking about what's best for her."

"Evil as she is," the CIT muttered, glancing away, "she's got looks enough to worm her way around any guy with a pulse and operating eyes."

The surfer rolled her own. "Looks are overrated, Courtney. And I'm not just saying that as a girl who _wishes _it were true. I hear this from my guyfriends all the time: it doesn't matter if a girl looks like Marilyn Monroe. If she's got the personality of the Wicked Witch of the West, she's not going to last long with any guy. Not even a guy like Duncan. _Especially_ not a guy like Duncan!"

"Believe me when I say he'd be up for the challenge," Courtney informed her friend bitterly.

"Court, that's not what I meant," Bridgette responded, sighing. "Look, I know you think Duncan's just… Actually," Bridgette paused, realizing she wanted to hear the words come from Courtney herself, "I _don't_ know what you think of Duncan." As the curiosity hit her, she asked, "What _do _you think of him?"

"Are you kidding me?" Courtney responded, flabbergasted. "I would _hope_ that it was _obvious_ by now." She began ticking off on her fingers (and eventually was forced to move onto a second hand). "He's a pig and an ogre and a million other revolting creatures. He's selfish and sexist, brainless and bothersome. He's annoying and arrogant, and—"

"He's _crazy _about you!"

If Courtney hadn't been paying attention to Bridgette already, those words would have captured it in an instant. Mostly because that was the last point she'd expected Bridgette to be making. "_Excuse_ me?"

Glancing around the room like she expected someone to hear her through the walls, Bridgette scooted another centimeter closer to her friend so their knees were touching. "Look, you're not supposed to know this, but lucky for us, the standard _Best Friend Code_ overrides the _Best Friend of Your Boyfriend Threatening You Code._"

"There's a code for that?" Courtney asked, mostly to herself.

"Okay," Bridgette started, her tone half-hushed and three-quarters excited, "Remember when you told me about the bunny thing he did for DJ and I told you I could hardly believe he would do something like that?" Courtney nodded. "_Well,_ after that spin-the-wheel-of-torture episode where Eva was out to get me and got kicked off (thank goodness), I was headed to the beach to kill time waiting for the bonfire and I heard him sending you messages from the confessional."

"Bridgette, I _know_ that," Courtney replied, voice tired. "They aired it on TV." And while she'd been quite preoccupied (more like _righteously obsessed_, really) with maiming Harold at the time the residents of Playa were shown the episode, she'd found the gesture incredibly sweet and giddily romantic. But that was before time-without-Duncan allowed her senses to return to normal and she realized how foolish she'd come off on international TV, how inescapably humiliating it all was. Before she realized how much control she'd lost over some _boy,_ or how incompatible the two of them looked as a couple, standing next to each other in living color.

Before Duncan had forcibly reintroduced himself _back_ into her life and sent the entire tainted vision she'd constructed of him-of _them-_shattering to the ground in Heather-tinted shards.

"Court, they only aired like a five second sound byte. He must have been in there for, what, at least a good _forty minutes_ talking to you. _And_," the blonde added, raising an eyebrow at her friend, a smile playing on her lips, "did you know that Gwen told me she heard from DJ that he spent _hours _upon _hours _working on that skull he gave you after you got voted off? And they aired that bit where he carved your initials in the wooden head during the challenge, right? And—"

"Him being a horrible romantic doesn't make him any less of a pain in the ass!" the politician interrupted quickly, not liking where Bridgette was going (and annoyed that her point was completely supported by concrete examples). For some unfathomable reason, her cheeks were getting hotter and hotter.

"But it _does_ make him less likely to be hopping around to evil incarnate in his spare time, no?"

Courtney scowled at the blonde, who was now smiling at her a little impishly. "Don't you have your _own _room?" she asked pointedly.

Grinning a bit more, the girl beside her teased, "Yeah, and you're _in _it."

It took the perplexed Courtney a minute to reanalyze the darkened room around her. Since all the hotel rooms looked _exactly _the same, it was perpetually confusing as to whose was whose. Still, the swimsuits, hoodies, magazines, granola bar wrappers, surfboard wax, hair ties, mismatched flip-flops, scattered bottles of water, and the two half-packed, half-unpacked blue suitcases littered on every flat surface of the room were all the reminder Courtney needed. Unlike her friend, _she'd _been informed of the invention of the shelf, the trash can, and the closet.

Embarrassed at her own mistake, Courtney tossed the pillow she'd been clinging to back on Bridgette's bed and made to get up, breaking the comforting contact between their legs. "God. You know I'm falling asleep when I mistake your _sty _for my room," she commented as she picked her way to the door.

Bridgette merely rolled her eyes in response and giggled at Courtney's obvious attempts to dodge the topic at hand. But completely aware of what Courtney had endured as of the late hour, the newly christened best friend decided to let the departing party off without more pressing. She did, however, think to offer a patchwork of parting advice. "Think about what I said, though, okay? And practice your breathing! It'll do you good. Flossing always helps me decompress too. Oh! And try not to spend the entire night moping!"

"_Goodnight_, Bridgette," Courtney insisted, clicking the door shut to finalize the conversation. Miffed that Bridgette had called her out on _precisely _what she planned on doing, Courtney tried to clear her thoughts as she walked the measly meter back to her room next door. She was looking forward to a sleep-filled, Duncan-less night.

Unfortunately, a boy somewhere on the floor above her had other plans for the evening.

* * *

Wait, you mean Duncan's not appearing in this chapter at _all?_ Dangit.

And now, some ridiculously long-winded notes from your two co-authors, which celebrate a very important annual occasion:

**From strayphoenix**: And so, 17 chapters into this wonderful ride that has been TAOP, Rina and I have reached our ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY of conceiving this story! Don't let the 'Published' date fool you: This was in the works a long time since any of ya'll got to see it ;) In commemoration of the event, we've dedicated a chapter to the Courtney/Bridgette dynamic which is kind of a tribute to our (amazing Contempephoenix) writing dynamic as well :D We tried to explain it as best as possible, but we'll welcome any questions to clarify.

We're counting the anniversary from the date of the PM I sent Rina on **October 17, 2009**, offering her an idea for her _'Fill In the Blank'_ story based off my own story, _'Courtney vs. The World'_. It was going to be a ONESHOT, only a ONESHOT, and JUST a ONESHOT because neither of us had the time then to get into an ongoing story. The proposal looked something like this:

**Stray to Rina, October 17, 2009.**  
_Here's an idea that came to mind: Since Duncan technically gets booted off in the evening, I'd think it would be night time by the time he reaches Playa de Losers and he's got to be deadbeat tired after sleeping (with Heather) out in the woods the night before. So he just asks Chris/Chef/Sasquatch where his room is so he can crash and he's directed to Courtney's room (because Chris is evil) and given her room key. He kicks off his shoes and strips to his boxers but quickly figures out what they tried to pull on him when he spots Courtney already sleeping soundly in bed (in her undies since the producers are keeping the temperature within the 'tropical' theme aka SUFFOCATINGLY HOT). He smirks and lays down on top of the covers on the other end of the bed, thinking about how he's missed her and deciding whether or not to surprise her and wake her up when exhaustion takes over and he accidentally falls asleep._

_The next morning, much like out in 'The Sucky Outdoors', the two find themselves tangled up together with only the thin sheet between them. Courtney, the earlier riser, blinks awake and thinks that she's dreaming of Duncan being there to which Duncan, the lighter sleeper, cockily replies like the ** he is something along the lines of 'dreams do come true, princess' and Courtney is shocked awake._

_The scene would then switch to any other girl camper on the island, maybe Katie/Sadie and/or Lindsay, heading down the hall for breakfast when they're interrupted by Courtney shrieking and screaming profanities at Duncan as she throws him out of her room into the hallway still just in his boxers and grinning like an idiot. He turns to cockily inform a shocked Katie/Sadie/Lindsay that this is EXACTLY what it looks like as Courtney throws his duffel bag out into the hall after him, still yelling at him and calling him everything under the sun. He gets up and dusts himself off as other doors open and the rest of the girls on the floor step out into the hallway at Courtney's shrieking. Duncan: "Nice vocab, Princess! Learn that for the SATs?" Courtney: (chucks one of Duncan's Converse at his head)_

_Some of the guys rush down from the boy's floor upstairs at the commotion and Chris (having set this up the night before) has a cameraman run in too already rolling to get footage. The boys start hollering with laughter as Courtney throws out Duncan's shirt and pants too. Leshawna bent over in stitches, says something about Duncan knowing how to make an entrance AND an exit._

_Suddenly, Courtney becomes aware that there are people out in the hallway and rushes to the door, still only in her underwear but holding the bed sheet up around herself. She flushes scarlet, shrieks again, and slams the door shut, and resumes yelling obscenities at Duncan from the other side. Duncan high fives Geoff and DJ in greeting as the crowd disperses and he starts collecting his things, wondering to himself if he's going to kill Chris faster or slower as a result of the morning's events, when he spots the cameraman trying to sneak away and decides he'll kill him slower. Much much slower. The three guys gang up on the crewmember and chase him out of the complex to steal the tape back before it can get to Chris._

_LOL and that's where my lengthy idea ends. It would be the scene that Bella blackmails Courtney with but we can build up on it like…Duncan spends the day trying to get back in Courtney's good graces but only ends up making it worse for himself when he admits to the Heather thing and still playing it up like they spent the night together which only further upsets her (he hasn't told her yet that he has the tape ;) I've only got one more chapter left on 'Courtney vs World' so I'll be free to get to work ping-ponging after that. Any more ideas?_

Oh sweet, sweet irony.

NEXT CHAPTER: No rest for the wicked! Duncan will see to that for sure…

**From Contemperina: **Interesting, right? This 17+ chapter story was meant to be a oneshot, twoshot at the _MOST_. I'm guilty of throwing around so many disclaimers and excuses regarding why I couldn't commit to this project 100%, I'm disgusted with myself. But I guess sometimes, life (and TDI!) has other plans. :) It also seems ridiculous that I've already been working with the amazing strayphoenix for a _whole year. _I mean, a year is a long time, isn't it? Because it doesn't really _feel_ like a long time, at least where TAOP is concerned.

And yes, stray and I did exchange gifts (: If you'd like to get in on the fun, head to our respective deviantART pages, both under the same usernames as you find us here.

Regarding this chapter, we tried to give some insight into the Bridgette/Courtney dynamic, as stray said. So many fanfictions just dive right into their friendship, _à la_ "They became best friends overnight because they're just THAT compatible!" But as we all know, friendship doesn't work exactly like that, though I'm sure being on Wawanakwa certainly speeds up the process ;) I really do believe that Bridgette and Courtney created a genuine friendship, though, not some haphazard alliance that would dissolve as soon as the show ends.

My apologies to anyone who missed seeing Duncan this chapter. But don't worry—he's on his way. :D But on his way to where? Hmmm...

* * *

Wish us a happy anniversary!

Thanks for reading! Please review (:


	18. Never sleep angry

If we told you to think of TAOP like a TV show, and we claimed that TAOP just went on that little break TV shows do in the middle of the season (breaking around the holidays and resuming in February), would it make you _more_ or _less _angry than if we just skipped this author's note entirely?... Hahahahah. But seriously.

If you'll recall, when we left Duncan, he was the subject of midnight conversation between best friends Courtney and Bridgette. And now, we learn his fate…

* * *

_**Rule 18: Never sleep angry; stay up and fight**_

Duncan swore angrily as he divorced a suitably large piece of oak from its too-pretty, too-fancy, too-_disgusting _mother of an ornate wooden drawer set. The splintering wood made a satisfying _shunk! _sound each time he snapped it in half against his knee, and although the action did little to deter him from his murderous thoughts, he found it oddly comforting, reverting back to the things he knew best. Like rampant destruction.

He hadn't utterly destroyed anything in a very long time, he realized unhappily—save for maybe a relationship. But those didn't really count, or so he told himself. Not when compared to the raw satisfaction of ripping something apart with his bare hands.

Maybe he really was a Neanderthal, he thought bitterly, pitching back onto his bed and tossing one half of the formless wooden mass next to his pillow.

Hating where that train of thought was headed (somewhere with brown hair and an irresistible temper), he grabbed his pocket knife from where the wooden drawer set had once stood and began sharpening the other half of wooden chunk into… _something—_he wasn't sure what_. _Something sharp. Something with a point. Something that could cause a _hell _of a lot of damage. More specifically, he decided, something that could kill Heather. Stab her clean through her cold, black heart. That is, it _would _have been cold and black, if the bitch even _had _one.

But Duncan was pretty sure she didn't.

"How—" he hissed, "—could I have been so _stupid_?" He slashed at the wood, yanking loose the ribbon that curled off in response and chucking it at the floor.

He felt like the biggest moron in the universe for not having seen it sooner. If he hadn't been so preoccupied since arriving on the island and had instead, oh, maybe gone and _watched _the episodes that had aired like _everyone else _had, he would have realized Courtney's elimination was _Harold's _fault from the get-go. He could have taken care of that geek in a heartbeat—the second he got off the boat! They all could have been at Harold-McGrady-Doris-Something-Whatever's funeral at that very moment!

But no. Everyone had known it was Harold except him. No one said a thing and he'd never bothered to _ask_ because he'd always been so damn _sure_—

"GAH!" He winced and ran through a dozen more swears as he brought his nicked, newly bleeding thumb to his mouth. "Freaking _perfect_."

He blindly tossed his half-finished stake into a pile that had already received a dozen others, so as to afford full attention to his wound. Flopping back onto his bed, he hissed as the wood shavings he'd scattered all over his sheets dug into his bare back.

There was no way he was going to be able to sleep without killing something or someone that night—he'd known _that_ even before he turned his back on the dock—but he was still trying to talk himself out of it, even if his efforts were halfhearted at best. But it wasn't out of compassion. (_That _was for sure.) Oh, Duncan was still bent on getting what was probably the most _deserving _vengeance of all time. But, he reasoned grudgingly, if he waited till morning, he would hopefully think of payback more suitable than going 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' all over their asses.

"ARGH! Damn the four-eyed, retarded geek-wad!" Duncan cursed as he flipped over onto his stomach (more splinters in uncomfortable places, but he was too pissed to care). He pressed his face straight into his pillow in an attempt to block out the one remaining lamp he'd been too lazy to turn off, ignoring the splinters underneath his bare chest and the way the tip of his nose was being flattened under the weight of his head. He cursed something incoherent, even to himself, into the darkness of his pillow, Heather's name interspersed among the string of swears.

Duncan seethed as his memory took him back to those icily evil eyes: hateful and (regretfully) alluring at the same time. That bitch was probably getting the best damn sleep of her life downstairs in her room. After all those weeks of flea-infested cots at Camp Wawa-hellhole, having _actual _beds felt just about like heaven on Canada. Or maybe that was only if Courtney was next to you, because his bed sure didn't feel like heaven at the moment.

The punk ground his teeth, face still pressed to his pillow. Try as he might, he just couldn't throttle the infuriating thought that evil incarnate in designer wedges had just about gotten away with murder _right under his nose _and there wasn't a _damn _thing he cou—

Suddenly, inspiration dumped on Duncan like a load of Chef's leftovers, and he snapped his head up from where he was slowly starting to suffocate himself. It had come to him instantaneously, like all his good plans tended to, and that was all the proof he needed to convince himself it was an awesome plan. Just like that, he knew _exactly _what he could do to take the edge off his evening _and _take care of at least one of his problems. And if he were to be _truly _lucky, it would attract a big audience as well. (After all, no prank was ever considered epic unless it had a decently sized crowd to propel it to infamy.)

Never very religious, Duncan found himself secretly praying to whichever deity wouldn't smite him that Chris was as thorough a cheap as he suspected as he pulled himself to his knees, still atop his bed. Banging on the wall just behind his headboard, he called, "Geoff!"

A loud squeak came from the other room followed immediately by, "AGH! The cops are coming! _Everybody bail!_" and violently flapping sheets, all of which Duncan could hear perfectly, without even putting his ear to the wall.

"Geoff!" he half-shouted, still knocking on the wall and still trying to keep his voice relatively low so as to only wake his target and not the whole hallway—yet. "I need your help, man!"

The noises next door ceased as Geoff presumably stopped trying to throw off his bed sheets (and, after that, jump out the window.) "…Duncan?" he asked in confusion.

"No, your _mom_," the boy snapped at the wall, rolling his eyes. "Listen, do you remember when we were chasing that camera flunky yesterday morning and we passed by some Prop Storage room?"

Duncan had to wait a few seconds for Geoff to comb through his memory, clouded by the last straggling traces of sleep. "Yeah, I think so…" he mumbled finally. "But what's that got to do with—?"

"I need something from there," Duncan continued, ignoring whatever wasn't the confirmation he was looking for. "You gotta grab it for me while I set up the rest of my idea."

Despite the loud and tired yawn that escaped from Geoff's side of the wall, the party boy replied with a, "Yeah man, sure. Whatever whatchamacallit you need."

Grinning like he'd won the lottery without even trying, Duncan leaned closer into the wall. "Listen up, man. This is how it's going down…"

* * *

"_Ugh! _Freaking _perfect_!" Courtney hissed, struggling to maintain balance on her desk's rolling chair (which she knew was highly unsafe and should never be tried unless dealing with exceedingly annoying appliances) in her underwear, trying to fix her accursed ceiling fan—which had _apparently _stopped working at some point in the night if the sweaty stupor she'd awoken in was any indication. While the ornate looking contraption ultimately did little to deter the hotel heat, at least it had been doing _something_. And when even that little relief ceased to function, her body temperature had risen enough to both pull her from her dreams and get her in the mood for mass murder.

But even through her frustrated attempts at discovering the root cause of the insufferable malfunction, she was trying to shake the sinking suspicion that the fuzzy recollection she had of her dream had been _hot _enough on its own.

Unable to see much in the dim light of the moon, Courtney cursed aloud, grabbing onto the (not) rotating blades and preparing to rip the fan off the ceiling. _Okay, just calm down, Court. No need to get overly physical when the problem could be a simple electrical malfunction_, she told herself, fighting to ward off the impulse. She took a _very_ deep breath and slowly released the fan, carefully stepping down from the unstable rolling chair beneath her.

After taking a second to right herself, she headed over to the light switch to increase visibility, squinting her eyes in preparation for the blinding overhead light. Her precautions, however, were proved useless; her forced peace of mind evaporated immediately as she realized the lights were not, in fact, turning on at all. "Oh, _come on!"_

She stomped over and checked her PDA—her single frowned-upon-yet-not-explicitly-prohibited electronic—which she'd left charging on her bedside table and saw that it was, in fact, _not _charging. _N__ow _there was no power in her room at some random hour in the morning, unidentifiable because all electronics had apparently ceased function! This left her either roasting alive in her own bedroom or pulling an Izzy and sleeping in the nude, _neither _one an option she wanted to even _consider__, _let alone attempt.

Never in a million years had Courtney thought she'd actually be _missing _the Wawanakwa cabins. Yes, they'd been bug-infested and filthy and they smelled like curdled cheese more often than not, but at least she'd had company and other people to suffer along with her, sharing the disgusting burden. (It also gave her an audience to listen to her complaining.) Of course, she could assume that every other ex-contestant was stuck in the same situation, but it seemed all the more likely that this was some unkind form of universal justice for launching herself at Heather and causing a spectacle earlier.

She scowled at the very thought, wiping some sweat from her brow with the edge of her bed sheet. The sharp crossing of her arms accentuated her huff of frustration as she plopped back down on her bed to fume over this unpleasant turn of events, listening to the…gentle hum of the… _Wait._

Courtney snapped back to attention as she realized the hum she was hearing couldn't _possibly _be from the ceiling fan or the air-conditioning or any of the other hums she was accustomed to hearing (as her sleepy brain had originally suspected) because none of the above were _working. _Puzzlement overriding both her exhaustion and frustration, she stood hesitantly and strained her ears to pinpoint the source of the noise. After a moment or two of trying to calculate its location (allowing for muffling and sound angles) and _failing_, Courtney started walking around the room in search of the source of the noise without the slightest inkling as to what could produce such a faint, continuous buzz without electricity.

Just as she was checking underneath her bathroom sink (it had seemed like a logical place to look at the time) to see if there was a backup generator of some sort hiding under there among the towels, the humming stopped altogether.

The sudden vacuum of silence that surrounded the CIT was far too eerie and ominous for her tastes. Her head still stuck under the sink, she pursed her lips and paused in her search, waiting to see if perhaps the noise would start up again so she could either _A_) continue on with her annoyed rant against the suspicious sound, or _B_) resume her annoyed rant against the ceiling fan and the hotel's overall lack of power.

She stayed frozen, listening, though nothing could be heard around her own irritated breathing. Resigning herself to the fact that the noise must have been coming from someone else's room (making it someone _else's _problem entirely), Courtney was about to return to her earlier problem-solving when just as suspiciously as it had stopped, the humming resumed: at a higher volume and more annoying intensity than before.

Courtney ground her teeth as she grabbed the closest thing to her hand (one of those tiny shampoo bottles) and squeezed the life out of it in frustration. Wonderful. _Fan-tastic. _It was the perfect conclusion to her perfect day! Two near death experiences (because death by freezing water was just as valid as death by falling off a building, if not more), a catfight with Heather in front of all her campmates, enough Duncan-related drama to merit creation of an entire _other _season in and of itself and now this sleep-disrupting noise at—

_Duncan! _

Surprised by her revelation, Courtney started, accidentally smacking the back of her head on the lead pipes beneath the sink. _Of course_, she seethed as she jumped to her feet and headed briskly towards the bedroom door, irately rubbing the back of her head. Why she had expected to manage even a _single_ shred of solace since he'd come to corrupt her island paradise with his immaturity, his positively _barbaric_ antics, was incomprehensible to her.

Grasping the door handle tightly, readying herself to turn it and go beat the snot out of Duncan as she knew she could, Courtney came up short as she realized that she was about to charge out into the hallway in her underwear—again.

"Oh, nice _try_, Duncan!" she spat aloud, more for herself than because Duncan was anywhere close enough to hear her. Spinning on her heel, she dashed back to her drawers, quickly rifling through them for whatever she could get her hands on so she could stop tropical storm Duncan before he turned into a full-blown hurricane—like he usually did. "You don't punk _this _girl the same way twice!"

Ripping out the first night shirt she came across (there was a delinquent on the loose; she really didn't have time to think about presentation), she yanked it over her head, strategically saving time by dressing and stomping blindly in the direction of the door at once. Pushing her arms through the oversize sleeves, she checked that the shirt hit her mid-thigh, which was all the cover she really needed. It felt odd finally wearing the shirt, seeing as she really hadn't had a chance to wear any of them since arriving at Playa—irksome, but it also greatly reduced her amount of laundry.

She reached the door for a second time and ran through a mental checklist to assure that yes, she actually _was _primed for a killing spree this time. She concluded she was prepared (shoes weren't _really_ necessary, after all) just as heavy thuds began reverberating down the hallway… like the kind a pair of Converse would make if placed on the feet of a delinquent trying to escape the scene of a crime that he had just committed in order to make Courtney's post-TDI life more miserable than he'd already made it—thuds loud enough that she could hear them above the inexplicable humming. And headed her way.

Courtney smirked as a thought came to her. Stealthily, she leaned up against the back of the door, twisting the handle in preparation.

She only had to wait a second or two for the footsteps to reach the designated position. The second they did, Courtney threw her full body weight against the door so that it swung out forcefully, hitting something human-sized and human-solid.

The blow knocked said humanoid off his feet and allowed Courtney the time to creep around the edge of the door and step out into the hallway triumphantly. "_Ha_!" she shouted, pointing a finger at the figure on the floor. "Take _that, _Duncan! That'll teach you to—"

But it wasn't Duncan lying on the floor. Instead, Geoff lay flat on his back, the dim emergency lights of the hallway shining off his crisply white boxer briefs (when Courtney bleached, she _bleached)_. His cowboy hat lay about a meter away from the rest of him, leaving his uncovered face rapidly blinking up at the ceiling in shock. The unfortunate party boy was trying to figure out what the _heck _had just happened to land him smack on the floor; as Courtney stared at him, she was trying to do the same.

Motion caught in the corner of her eye, alerting her to the fact that she and Geoff were not alone in the hallway. Before fully registering what had led her to be standing over the cowboy in the first place, she turned away from him in surprise, too confused to hope it was Duncan standing there trying to discretely shrink away from her.

Of course, it wasn't.

"Oh _crap, _man! _Pleas_e!" Trent pleaded, cringing against the opposite wall and throwing up his hands to shield himself. "_Please_, I've already had my mandatory concussion for the day! I swear!"

To say that Trent was cowering would be something of an overstatement. Yes, Trent was in decent shape and yeah, he was (more than) a little accident prone, but he was a musician! Sure, he had the capacity to fend off a flying crate of oranges (if given enough reaction time, that is), but he took a firm stance against getting into fights with girls. He was a romantic, after all, not a Rambo. And from what he had previously witnessed of Courtney's unbridled wrath, he was unsure if even _Rambo _would be able to finagle his way out of that girl's cross-hairs.

"Trent?" she asked in utter bewilderment, lifting her voice above the mystery sound that still surrounded them, louder in the hallway than in the rooms. But then, as if sorry for the bother it had just caused, the noise cut off sharply again, leaving Courtney and the two boys in somewhat unfamiliar silence. Hoping for an explanation, she turned to the party animal, who had managed to sit himself up but was still blinking far more rapidly than was normal. "…Geoff?"

The blond fell back to the floor mumbling something about skulls, conking his head on the carpet.

Deeming his cognizance hopeless, the CIT's bewildered expression was replaced with an upset scowl when she checked both ends of the hallway and found absolutely no sight of her target, whom she'd been _positive _wouldn't be far away from a situation as ridiculous as the one in which she found herself.

"What the heck is going on here?" she asked, her glare shooting between the two boys outside her room in the dim backup lights, demanding a response.

Trent spoke up quickly, still painfully aware that he'd once again managed to accidentally end up in Courtney's line of fire. He lowered his hands slightly, checking the girl's livid expression through his guitar strumming fingers. Still not completely convinced that the CIT wasn't going to take her misplaced anger out on him, he began very carefully, "Look, I… I don't know everything, okay?"

"Well, what _do _you know?" Courtney snapped, planting her hands on her hips over the comfortable material of her shirt. (She was also a fan of using liberal amounts of fabric softener.)

"I was minding my _own_ business," Trent admitted quickly, prompted forward by the overpowering desire to stay alive long enough to see Gwen again and the new awkward silence that filled the building without the hum of _anything. _"All I know is one second I'm taking a whiz," he explained, "and the next the power cuts out and there's this sound like a boat motor coming from down the hall."

He briefly moved his hands from his defensive position to gesture toward the ceiling—and the boy's floor above it—in that general direction. "So I go out into the hallway to check what it is, right? Then it stops! And next thing I know, Geoff here nearly bowls me over heading for the stairwell, and…um…"

Trent trailed off atypically as he lowered his hands, enough for Courtney to see that he was blatantly staring at her.

"And _what_?" The CIT's tone was clipped like a shrubbery as she took a menacing step towards Trent (who logically tried to scramble backwards but was impeded by the wall behind him). "Someone _better _start making sense!" she threatened.

"What the heck just _happened_?" Geoff asked at last. He had managed to pick himself up off the floor, though his legs were still quite wobbly; he attempted to reach down to pick up his cowboy hat a moment later and nearly fell over again in the process.

"That's what I was _just _asking Trent!" Courtney snapped, now turning her attention to the party boy. "But more _importantly_," she amended, checking the hallway again, "Where on Earth is that no-good, useless excuse for a friend you have?"

Geoff cleared his throat weakly (totally oblivious to Courtney's impatience for his words) as he got ready to explain, but he didn't even get to start. Giving Courtney a onceover, Geoff completely lost whatever previous thought he'd been about to bestow upon the girl across from him.

"Um, Courtney…?" He started again, tilting his head and giving her a look identical to Trent's.

But far beyond her wit's end, Courtney didn't have time to waste for arbitrary observations. "_**What**__! __**Is**__! __**Going**__! __**On**__?" _she screeched._"_And _**where**__ is—?" _

The scream erupted suddenly, abrupt and totally unexpected, so loud that the boys and girl in the hallway jumped in surprise. Even with her hands covering her ears, the scream continued rising in volume until Courtney had become sure someone was being brutally murdered outside her door. Then, the guitar and drums cut in to join it.

As Courtney tried to make herself think through the mad guitar strumming, chaotic drum banging, and lung-shredding screams that came together to make heavy metal rock music, she was fairly sure she heard shouting coming from down the hallway, distinguishable from the blaring song only because it contained too much genuine anger to have been scripted ahead of time.

And just like that, the music cut off after only half a verse, though the back-up screaming didn't cease. As Trent and Courtney pulled their hands from their ears and looked around in bewilderment (and Geoff tried his best to pull off a look that closely resembled theirs), a '_bang!' _erupted from down the hall, louder than even Geoff's previous collision. One of the hotel doors had swung open and slammed against the wall, imbedding in it one of many permanent dents.

Heather stormed from the room, dressed in a tank top and boy shorts and spitting mad. ___And _covered from bandana to bare feet in flecks of plaster.

"_**WHERE IS HE**__?" _she roared, glancing wildly around the hallway. Noticing Courtney and her entourage four rooms down, she stalked straight over to them and pointed furiously at Courtney. "I knew it! I _knew _you had something to do with this!" she accused, madly brushing the beige flecks off her person.

"_Me_?" Courtney shot back indignantly. "I had _nothing _to do with—_whatever _this is!" She threw her hands up in exasperation, then pointed to Geoff and Trent. "Ask _them _what's going on!"

"Oh, I'll _TELL _you what's going ON!" Heather began, her fury exceeding even the most _reasonable _reasoning. "I—!"

"_Wow_, Heather," a voice commented dryly from behind them. "You look like someone dropped a _ceiling _on you."

All eyes skittered to the stairwell beside the elevators. Duncan casually leaned against the doorframe, silhouetted against the stairwell by the dim emergency lights, arms crossed over his bare chest like he actually belonged there.

Courtney felt her whole body light up like neon at the sight of him standing there in just his boxers, despite the circumstances. But in her defense, the lighting didn't help matters either, as it highlighted the shadows of his muscles and glanced off his pale skin, throwing the black noise-reduction headphones he had resting around his neck into sharp contrast. Not to mention his Mohawk was slightly lopsided and uneven (he hadn't had a chance to gel it properly before enacting his revenge), giving him this really _wild _look that had Courtney almost wishing he'd leave it like that more often.

Catching her thoughts, she immediately and viciously kicked herself internally for even stopping to notice.

But if Courtney had felt a spark, Heather had a full-blown flame blaring beneath her—for completely different reasons._"YOU!" _she shrieked.

The delinquent raised his eyebrows in fake surprise, trying to manage a '_Who, me?' _expression that was thoroughly ruined by the beaming smirk he just couldn't repress. Heather marched right up to him and got in his face, seething, but Duncan—prepared from hazardous situations Heather could never even _dream _to duplicate**—**didn't even flinch. "You vile, _hideous _excuse for a human being! HOW _DARE _YOU?"

"So…for those of us just tuning in…?" Trent hedged, hoping to get some form of explanation.

"This _sick-o _cut a hole through my roof, and _then _he started blaring his nauseating, god-awful death music so the rest of the ceiling would fall in on top of me!" Heather accused, glaring at Trent as she stepped away from Duncan, still indicating the boy under fire with one of her manicured hands. "And he _knew _this would happen!"

The delinquent shrugged casually, unable to hide the huge, smug grin lighting up his features. "Nah. I was just enjoying some late-night tunes. Not my fault this building is so crappily reinforced that my floor—oh sorry, I mean _your ceiling—" _He chuckled. "—caved on you."

"You're still _holding _the _chainsaw!_" Heather shrieked at him, pointing at the contraption in his hands.

"Maybe I just _had _to cut down a few palm trees in the middle of the night," the delinquent explained wickedly as he swung said chainsaw over his shoulder. In the flickering glow of the hallway emergency lights, Courtney could see that it was attached by a thick blue power cable to the reason the entire building had a blown fuse. Snickering, he added, "It's not like you have any ___proof_. Right, guys?"

"I didn't see anything," Geoff replied, shrugging innocently even though his line sounded awfully rehearsed.

"I had to take a whiz," Trent repeated, holding his hands up, palms out, in an attempt at appeasing Heather and avoiding a broken limb to accompany his concussion. "_Swear _on Neil Young's guitar!"

Anticipating her response with a smirk, Duncan then turned to Courtney, but he did a double-take, hiking an eyebrow up at his Princess curiously.

"_Someone_," Courtney started testily, ignoring the look for the sake of her own sanity, "cut the power off to the building so that I almost suffocated alive in my own bedroom! And _then _that person had the impudence to go on about it like _nothing _happened at—!" she automatically glanced down at the watch she wasn't wearing, "—all hours of the night!" she finished, throwing her hands up.

"Um, you guys might want to keep it _doooown _before you wake the rest of the _build-iiiing_…" Geoff mumbled in a sing-song voice. He'd just become oriented enough to noticed the disgruntled sounds coming out of several rooms up and down the hallway as the female residents of Playa came to realize they weren't going back to their beauty sleep any time soon.

"How on Earth am I supposed to go about sleeping with this total anarchy raging outside my door?" the CIT went on, working up one of her infamous tirades against the delinquent she always found herself at odds with. But before she had a chance to get _really _flared up (she'd barely gotten _started_), Heather spun on the brunette at lightning speed, depositing more of her plaster flecks on the floor in the process.

"Oh, don't even _start _with your crap, Courtney!" Heather snapped, too enraged to even bother with the normal formalities that came with being a frenemy. "This is between me and your b—!"

But to everyone's surprise—especially Courtney's—Heather cut herself off, opting instead to give Courtney the same curious look she'd gotten from the three other boys, albeit with a far more narrowed and critical gaze. Before Courtney could ask or rage at the absurdity of it all, the formerly raven-haired girl spoke again, her voice more leveled and honestly interested.

"…Why are you wearing this goof's shirt?"

Courtney blinked at the off-the-wall question, her train of thought absolutely derailed as she curiously glanced down at her nightshirt. "'Why am I—?" A yellowed, circular, smiley-faced skull grinned up at her. "_**WHAT**__**?"**_

Immediately, she grabbed hold of the shirtfront with both hands, yanking it away from her person to confirm the authenticity of the clothing on her back. Sure enough, the soft black cotton was the one (and probably only) shirt most infamously found clothing Playa De Losers's resident delinquent.

Courtney's furious gaze ripped back up to the shirt's owner and the two other boys in her company. "_Duncan!_" She was about to chew him out singularly when she realized she could place the blame on multiple sets of shoulders. "Why didn't any of you _say _anything?" she demanded.

Geoff adjusted his cowboy hat, nervously looking away from Courtney's Gaze of Death. Trent immediately became preoccupied with flattening his ridiculously lopsided case of bed-head, which he'd been ignoring up until that point.

Surprisingly (or, rather, _unsurprisingly _as it were_—_she was dealing with _Duncan _after all), the delinquent shrugged his shoulders nonchalantly, grinning even wider under Courtney's livid stare. "Well, frankly babe," he admitted, "I have more dreams with you looking _exactly _like that than not, so I didn't think it was anything worth commenting on."

The CIT could only gape at him and what he had just very calmly implied (in front of their peers, no less!) as Heather half-turned back around to him, shooting him the _You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me _look she'd perfected over her years of being queen bee. The revelation didn't have the same effect on the other two boys, however, as they found Duncan's reasoning to be quite sound—at least according to guy logic.

Shoving down both her shock and appall, Courtney found her voice once more. Taking a tight step towards Duncan, finger pointed accusingly, she hissed through her teeth a sharp, "_YOU—!" _before a new thought came to mind. Abruptly switching tactics, she pointed firmly to Heather instead. "YOU," she commanded, voice even. "You have my full permission to kill him where he stands."

Heather shot her rival a scowl and a scoff, replying with a simple, "Like I needed _your _permission."

With one more killing glance at Duncan but not another word, Courtney spun on her bare heel and stormed back to her room as fast as could be still considered somewhat casual, seething the whole way.

Geoff stared after Courtney's retreating figure, utterly confused. "What the heck just happened?" he asked. "I thought that was a compliment!"

Duncan _'tsk-tsk_'ed, noting Courtney's hips swaying under the loose fabric of his own shirt. It was nothing short of mesmerizing to him; he hadn't thought it was possible for anyone to look so angry yet so _unbelievably_ sexy at the same time. "Guess some people have no sense of fashion, huh, Trent?"

Before the musician had time to process the fact that the situation was addressing him at all, Heather intercepted the question, her full attention (and glorious fury) once more honed in on Duncan. "Right. And _you _should be the one to talk about _fashion!"_

Planting her hands on her hips, she went on sarcastically, "Tell me, because I've been _dying _to know: Did you actually _choose _that hairstyle or did your mother have an affair with a cockatoo when your dad wasn't looking?"

"You leave my mother out of this!" Duncan shouted back, his face darkening dangerously as he lifted the chainsaw from its position slack across his shoulders and made to hit the _ON _switch.

He wasn't bluffing, either.

Courtney duly noted the clicks of doors up and down the hallway as Duncan, Geoff, and Heather's voices rose in both pitch and volume. Suffering from momentary tunnel vision, she nearly clipped Sadie in the shoulder as the more rotund girl cautiously, sleepily stepped out of the room next to Courtney's to investigate the commotion. By the time Courtney had locked herself back inside the safety of her room (making sure to double bolt the door), she was too incensed to actually care about the roar of the chainsaw out in the hallway or the increase in number of barking voices.

After all, if Duncan had a chainsaw in his possession, there wasn't much she could do to stop him from cutting Heather's bald head clear off, not that she really wanted to prevent that in the first place. If he wanted to go on a murderous rampage and end up back in jail, then hell—she was going to let him. It would sure get him out of _her _hair.

Instead of intervening as she probably should have, she opted to grab the hem of the shirt and swiftly pull the disgusting, offending, _odorous _article off her person as fast as was physically possible, not caring if she ripped it in the process. Tossing it away from her and onto the floor, she proceeded to jump on it, stomping for good measure as she plowed through her thoughts, completely beside herself with a strange combination of fury and embarrassment. He must have (_stomp!) _snuck it in her pile (_stomp!) _back while they were doing laundry together, (_stomp!) _that sneaky (_stomp!) _little (_stomp!) _bastard! (_stomp!) _She should have expected something so _juvenile _from him! (_stomp!) _

Never again would she feel safe picking out her clothes in the dark.

Once the shirt was flattened to her satisfaction, Courtney swiped it from the floor with the intention of chucking it out into the hallway and out of her sight. The closer she got to the door, however, the more she became aware of the true implications of the ruckus outside (it sounded like Leshawna was finally getting in on some of the Heather vengeance-related action) and the more hesitant she became. She stopped herself, mere steps away from the door, realizing it would not help her case _at all _if she threw Duncan's shirt out into the hallway into a large crowd of her peers while said boy was standing only a few doors down in his underwear, a situation in which he could fabricate a ludicrous explanation for her ownership of his shirt and she would be unable to defend herself.

After all, she could only deal with _one _career crushing scandal at a time, and she still had to find a way to hunt down and permanently destroy the incriminating footage captured the morning of Duncan's arrival before she could put her attention on _anything _else.

Courtney scowled at the ruined shirt in her hand and the present predicament she found herself in. She wasn't very well going to _keep _the filthy thing. It wasn't even worth using as a cleaning rag, which was unnecessary anyway with the hotel 'cleaning staff'. (A.K.A. Chef as French Maid…_which she wasn't thinking of if she wanted to sleep again that night!)_

She considered putting the offending article of clothing in the wash with her own clothes to let it be sorted correctly next time but then remembered that whoever cleaned the clothes had to go room to room to pick them up and would therefore notice a _boy's _shirt coming from a _girl's _room. She briefly entertained incinerating it, even at the risk of triggering the hotel's shower system—which would perhaps eliminate the heat as well. Yeah, and inundate most of the hotel.

Good idea.

Groaning at her lack of options, Courtney rolled the shirt up into a ball as she walked into her bathroom, opened up the cabinet beneath the sink, and blindly threw the garment in as far back as she could, slamming the door shut with force that was probably unnecessary.

She tossed herself back into her bed despite the heat, despite the lack of power, despite the fact that World War III was in its opening stages outside her very bedroom thanks to the boy who _insisted _on making himself the focus of her life's trauma. She yanked a single cover up to her waist and wished with all her might that Bridgette was correct in her belief that Heather and Duncan would kill each other, saving her the trouble of doing it herself.

A small explosion sounded from the general direction of Izzy's room. Courtney shoved her pillow over her head.

She should _be _so lucky.

* * *

Gee, Courtney. Lady Luck is just _never _on your side, is she?

**From strayphoenix**: Ladies and Gents, we are BACK! And we sure hope this chapter was worth its exceedingly lengthy wait, especially after all the trouble we suffered through to get it JUST right :D. See, our side of the world was struck with a giant meteor that impacted itself onto my laptop and—

Okay, okay, it's mostly my fault this is so late *is sheepish*

Rina and I planned on taking our Winter Hiatus after our anniversary but then a ton of other things started getting in the way before I could get this chapter back to her. I got a lot more active on deviantart, for one thing, school tried to (unsuccessfully!) smother me and I will admit to putting TAOP on the back burner for the 2 months it took me to write "Pieces" from start to finish (If any of you DxC fans are still mad about the TDWT love triangle, please go read it if you haven't already!).

THEN Rina and I sat down to actually discuss the chapter and came to the conclusion that (gasp!) we didn't actually LIKE how it looked! x_x So we had to go back to the drawing board to rearrange, rewrite, and redo a huge part of it! Which took MORE time that we were already behind on.

But hey, at least we didn't leave you with a cliffhanger last chapter, right? And we made sure this chapter wasn't a filler so it should make you happy that it was AWESOME and DRAMA-RIFIC and worth the four months we've been busy! Hope you liked Duncan's musical revenge. *snicker* And all you guys that wanted to see Courtney in Duncan's shirt way back in chapter 4? You're very welcome! :D

Chapter 19 coming at you...well, in less time than it took chapter 18 to get to you :P

**From Contemperina: **There are few things in this world that I enjoy more than sleeping. Posting new chapters of TAOP is one of those things—which is why I've woken up early to share with you the piece of work we like to call Chapter 18! (Creative, I know. But our chapter titles are just so long…)

I hope it was worth the wait. There were just so many things that got in the way! Like writing Chapter 18, and discussing Chapter 18, and discovering that we both hated Chapter 18, and rewriting Chapter 18, and the flu, and meteors crashing into our respective comput—!

You get the idea. BUT, you'll be happy to hear that stray and I have the rest of TAOP (yes, the _rest of TAOP_) pretty much plotted out events-wise. Now we just have to write it. And edit it, decide we don't like it, write it again, edit it again, decide we're satisfied, catch the flu, avoid flaming meteors… You see what we do for you?

Just kidding. We love every minute of it. And we hope you love it too.

* * *

10 points to the genius who comes up with the most creative chapter-posting delay tactic. I'm sure we can do better than flaming meteors…

Thanks for reading! Please review (:


	19. Never write off the morning after

It's been half a year. We've loved, we've lost, and we've come to a most powerful realization: TAOP as you now know it is finished.

Now don't panic! As a wise man once said, every end is a new beginning, and it has never held so true. What you're about to read is the end of Part 1 (_The Art of Making Up For a Midnight Snooze_) and the beginning of the Part 2.

So congratulations, everyone! You've reached the halfway point. (:

If you'll recall, when we left Courtney, she'd found herself in the middle of a climactic Duncan/Heather showdown…wearing nothing but Duncan's shirt. And now, we learn her fate…

* * *

**Chapter 19: Never write off the morning after**

Courtney lived for mornings. Not only because she was a morning person (though she was), or because she had a particular fondness for 7am silence (though she did), or because the birds were always chirping outside (though they were). No—mornings were a time of hope. Of happiness. _Especially at Playa De Losers_, she added confidently, changing out of her pajamas. Mornings were the part of the day where Courtney could try to pretend the _rest_ of her day wasn't about to be _completely_ and totally screwed up by someone else's sick, twisted idea of entertainment, or even worse: someone else's half-assed stunt that she'd undoubtedly get dragged into even though she'd had nothing to do with it in the first place! As had been the most recent fashion.

_But today?_ she asked herself as she brushed the knots out of her hair. Today was going to be different. She had not awoken to Duncan feeling up her ass. The pool outside was not being chemically manipulated into an ice rink. As far as she could tell, there was absolutely _nothing_ going on that would make this morning stand out in her memory or create reason for blocking it out. She squeezed out some toothpaste and went about brushing her teeth, humming as she went. As far as she could tell at the moment of… 7:13am, a certain delinquent didn't have a single plan up his sleeve, which boded well for her.

Courtney locked eyes with herself in the mirror, her melody coming to an abrupt halt, her fist going slack around her high-performance toothbrush. Who was she kidding? No morning with Duncan on the premises could begin this peacefully. After spitting out the minty foam in her mouth, she grumbled, "I'm in for a _loooong_ day…" snatched up her newspaper, and set off for breakfast, fully expecting a worst case scenario with **DUNCAN **plastered all over it.

* * *

Duncan awoke that morning to a tickling sensation under his nose. He moaned and willed himself to stay asleep, imagining, just for the briefest moment, that it was silky brown hair he was nuzzling against. His mouth pulled into a lazy smile as he mumbled something incoherently (to the well trained ear, it might have sounded suspiciously like a pick-up line) and reached out to grasp the shapely body attached to that head of hair.

It dully registered as strange when he couldn't _find _such body where it should have been, but Duncan, still convinced, kept his eyes stubbornly shut and padded his hand around the empty bed a moment longer, even as confusion tiptoed into his consciousness. It wasn't until the ticking sensation under his nose moved to cover his whole face (disrupting the somewhat necessary intake of air) that the oddity of this situation finally roused the disgruntled delinquent from his sleep. Grumbling, he reluctantly peeked an eye open to see…

Gray. A LOT of gray.

The reflex was immediate. He jerked his face back, spinning off the bed as he shoved his hand into his pillowcase and grabbed his emergency switchblade (hidden there specifically for the purpose of attacking intruders). Steeling his best killing instincts, he landed on the floor and simultaneously unsheathed his blade, dropping down into a lunge that was impressively both offensive _and_ defensive.

In the few seconds this took, however, Duncan's delayed senses finally caught up with him—just in time too, because the bed intruder Duncan had been prepared to fillet had hardly flinched at his _Matrix-_level display of reflexes.

Bunny sat casually on the bed's second pillow, ears quirked to the side, gazing at Duncan with its big, innocent, blue bunny eyes. It twitched its nose every few seconds in a way some people might have found cute.

The delinquent was not one of these people.

He glared venomously at the creature responsible for his most startling awakening since Chris's morning-helicopter-megaphone stunt and his relapse back to the Juvy days."Not _cool_, vermin!" he spat at it, flipping the blade back in with enough force to snap a bone.

He'd thought it impossible, but Bunny actually increased the cuteness factor by tilting his head a little, gazing at him from an angle. But Duncan was determined to remain immune, rolling his eyes as the threat of decapitation (more like de-foot-itation. Rabbit feet were lucky, right?) was completely lost on the critter.

Running a hand through his disaster of a Mohawk, Duncan cursed under his breath and kicked himself for being so jumpy over a _rabbit_. But hey: when the guy across the hall from you was in for hospitalizing his grandmother with a single knitting needle, and the bunkmate on top of you had a habit of _accidentally _busting ribs when you used the bathroom for too long, Juvy rule deemed it better to be paranoid than dead.

"Freaking _watch _yourself, man," he grumbled halfheartedly to himself, tossing away the blade atop his pants on the floor. Last thing he needed was a trip back to the bin just as Courtney started to come around. _Which will be sometime _very _soon, _he assured himself. As soon as he'd come up with a fresh plan of attack.

Still, Bunny was harmless as his marshmallow owner, and DJ _still_ refused to swat at the island's monster mosquitoes for fear of upsetting the fragile ecosystem. _Speaking of the creampuff_, Duncan wondered, taking a few seconds to stretch and appreciate the generous popping of his joints…now that he glanced around the room, DJ was nowhere to be found. Although the crash of water and horribly off-key rendition of a cheesy boy band song coming from the suite's bathroom was enough clue to figure it out.

It was DJ's room, after all, that Duncan had chosen to camp out in after the debacle last night had left a consequentially large hole in his consequentially unstable floor. And while he wasn't generally opposed to causing Heather pain and suffering as a rule of thumb, he had something of a bias against dropping in on her—_literally__—_sometime in the remainder of the evening when he'd much rather be blissfully snoring. Unless…

Duncan smirked darkly at the thought. Unless his bed fell atop hers in the middle of the night and crushed her like that witch in that movie, in which case it would've _totally_ been worth the risk of sleeping in his own room. But there was no guaranteeing that sequence of events. Plus, there was _no_ chance of peaceful sleep knowing Heather could look up at him, or yell at him, or get payback through their new 'window'; walking the mere two doors down to DJ's room had seemed like a much better choice.

So they'd spent a boring night, Duncan sleeping on the floor as his dreams alternated between a shapely brunette playing ice hockey and a _former _raven head's mutilation in the hands of Leshawna. While he wasn't exactly on the best of terms with the Sister Sass, she could sure throw a mean right hook (this he had learned from experience), and since two Heathers could fit into one Leshawna (curiously, a fact they were both proud of), Duncan figured that, with the math on Leshawna's side, it was safe to let her finish up the job. That and the fact that he'd _let _DJ take the chainsaw from him. (His ego couldn't possibly believe DJ had actually wrestled the item out of his grasp before he could do any lasting damage.)

Because the circumstances to which Duncan had awoken _completely_ trashed the possibility of further sleep, he went about getting dressed, smirking at the still-vivid memory of Princess in his shirt as he slid on one identical to it. He was still partly in awe that his plan had actually _worked, _and he wouldn't have been the least bit surprised if the sky opened up and dropped a Scheming Mastermind trophy on his head. Fighting hard to keep the mental image (especially her expression) from fading, he finished with his pants. Idly wondering what kind of mischief he could get up to today, Duncan reached for his shoes only to find that one of them had become occupied.

By a vermin.

"Get _out_ of my shoe," he spat, jabbing a finger first at the creature, and then to the floor where it belonged.

The miniature mammal blinked up at him, settling itself further into the opening of the red footwear.

But Duncan wasn't going to have any of that. When it came to stubbornness (not to mention, size, strength, and sharpness of teeth), he was sure he had Bunny beat. "I said _move_, dammit!" he barked, nudging at his shoe in hopes of tipping Bunny out. When the creature didn't hop out as expected (it looked like the rabbit thought the back and forth of the shoe was a _ride)_, he pulled his foot back like he was readying for a field goal and threatened, "I will _punt_ you like a Charlie Brown football! I _swear_ I will!"

Bunny hopped out of the shoe then and—before Duncan could celebrate this achievement—hopped directly to the foot Duncan still had planted on the floor and cuddled up against his ankle. If Duncan didn't know better, he would have said it had started _purring._

"No! Stupid animal! Go_ away_!" In the process of trying to shake Bunny off the shoe already on his foot, Duncan began hopping backwards, thoughts of his shoeless foot and the footwear awaiting it forgotten.

Oblivious to (or ignoring) Duncan's harmful intentions, Bunny eagerly bounded after the punk. And when said punk hit the corner of the room and could go no further, DJ's pet took the opportunity to jump up on top of the foot and shoe he still had on the ground, snuggling in comfortably and rubbing his face against the laces.

After a few further minutes of violent cursing, vengeful threats of becoming soup, and vicious glaring that would have sent much larger mammals running for their lives (all to no effect), Duncan grudgingly resigned himself to the fact that _maybe _a living creature one hundredth his size and mass could actually be more stubborn than him. That or simply many times stupider.

Facepalming and then double checking to make sure Bunny was his only witness, he bent over to scoop up the frustrating thing in his hands, sighing when it more than happily adjusted to the curve of his palms.

"_Look_," he hissed under his breath, walking the animal back over to its spacious cage on DJ's desk, "I don't know _what _your problem is! I ain't your mother, and if Deej wasn't so freaking attached to you, I'd send you to rabbit Heaven where all the other annoying—_stop _looking_ at me like that!"_

Just then, the bathroom door swung open, dousing the room in a steam smokescreen Hollywood would have paid millions for, DJ emerging with his waist and head wrapped in towels.

"Aw, are you two bonding?"

Duncan's expression flattened. "As _if_."

"But look, he _likes _you!"

Duncan glanced to the end of his extended arms to see Bunny peering at him adoringly. "Yeah, yeah," he grumbled, lightly tossing the ball of fur at DJ. "We already know its survival instincts are shot to Hell."

"What's that supposed to mean?" DJ asked distractedly, easily catching and stroking Bunny in his hands.

"Nothing," Duncan grumbled, finally getting his other shoe on. Changing the topic to avoid saying anything too nice (his Brain-to-Mouth filter was even _less _functional in the morning), he asked, "So what's the plan, Deej?"

DJ paused by Bunny's cage with the rabbit itself still in his hand. "…plan?" he inquired, apparently thrown off by Duncan's question. "Um, I dunno. Don' really have anything in mind…" he replied, turning back to put Bunny away. "_You're_ usually the one with the plan."

"Yeah, well I've slept better," Duncan offered as an excuse. "Though nothing gets your blood running like a morning heart attack," he muttered, eyeing the now-caged fur ball with distaste. It tilted its head again.

DJ either chose to ignore Duncan's words or didn't comprehend them in the first place. Walking to his closet and pulling out a shirt, he asked, "Well, you want to go down to breakfast? That's what everyone does in the morning." Struggling to get his shirt on over the towel on his head, he felt the need to amend, "Er, almost everybody. You haven't been there the last few days…"

Duncan chuckled, walking past DJ to straighten up his Mohawk in the mirror. "Haven't been there at all, bro," he said to his reflection. "If you need three meals a day, you _clearly_ aren't shoving enough food down your throat. But I _guess_ I can put in an appearance." Duncan turned around and was pleased to find that DJ had put on his pants with little to no difficulty. "Hey, do you have any hair gel lying around?"

"Dunc, I barely even have hair."

"Oh, yeah. Good point."

* * *

DJ always tried his best to greet the world with open arms. Seven-year-old DJ found a stray cat one spring day, begged his mom to let him take it in, and eventually convinced her to name it Leona. Eleven-year-old DJ watched that movie that always made him want to move to Candyland and, amply horrified by the sight of Charlie's four bedridden grandparents, established a five hug minimum requirement for all lunches with his elderly family members. 14-year-old DJ once found an abandoned baby bird and nursed it back to health in a Tupperware container full of straw and twigs he'd gathered himself. It would make sense, then, that 16-year-old DJ would offer an unfortunate Duncan shelter in his hour of need—even if DJ saw his floorlessness as the direct result of his dangerous actions, which _didn't_ exactly deserve pity.

So what if Duncan wasn't exactly a wounded animal (at least not of the furry variety) and probably deserved to fall through a roof at least once in his life? He was still one of DJ's buds, and he wasn't the type to let a brother down.

Besides, DJ loved sleepovers.

He'd retired to his room with plans to make up for lost sleep after wrestling the (hugely unsafe) chainsaw from (a very noisy) Duncan's grasp and hiding it in his room. But then Duncan busted through his door approximately thirty seconds after he'd settled down for the night, hollering, "Dude! Guess what I just realized?" Without waiting for a groggy reply, he continued happily, "You live above Lindsay!" He made shapes with his hands. "Beautiful, blonde, busty, Lindsay! Where's my chainsaw?"

An argument followed and DJ, half asleep, hardly remembered his own part of it. It ended only because DJ had refused to tell Duncan where he'd put his chainsaw (in the air conditioning vent) and Duncan, despite his twenty minutes of ransacking, couldn't find it himself. Deterred but not completely disheartened, Duncan had shrugged a 'whatever' and left to join the sounds of Leshawna and Heather going at it in the hallway. Which DJ had sleepily and inaccurately assumed was the end of it.

At least until Duncan trotted back in a few minutes later with a pillow from his room, tossed it on the carpet next to DJ's nightstand, and muttered a simple "Night, man" before immediately checking out for the evening.

Normally, the fact that Duncan wanted to bunk with him wouldn't have bothered DJ much (they'd spent the better part of seven weeks bunking together at camp, after all), but this time, Duncan was on the floor. The cold, hard, scratchy carpet floor. There really was enough room in the bed for the two of them…

The thought plagued him so insistently that DJ actually spent the better part of the next hour staring at the ceiling in turmoil, imagining how uncomfortable and terrible it must be to sleep on the floor, even if you may have indirectly deserved it. He worked himself into such a state of worry that he knew he'd never get to sleep knowing a brother was in such discomfort. So he picked his still sound asleep friend up off the floor (pillow and all) and laid him beside him at the opposite end of the bed.

It was a testament to either DJ's aptitude for sneaking or Duncan's complete exhaustion that his juvy senses hadn't kicked in at this point.

DJ had half expected some sort of angry rant from Duncan the next day—more than anything because Duncan was just about as prone to angry ranting as Courtney (though he'd never tell that to his face)—so he was really quite happy that Duncan had settled for going to breakfast instead of dwelling on the details of why and how he'd ended up in the same bed as DJ, who was craving some of Chef's French toast.

DJ had always assumed the delicious Playa food was concocted by someone else, but after his search for some basil had resulted in him finding Chef slaving over the kitchen stove, he'd stood quite corrected. He was also forced to swear on his mama's life that he would never tell anyone what he'd witnessed that day. Something about maintaining an air of—

"Deej, where are you going?"

He whirled around to see Duncan heading in the opposite direction of the camper stairs to the lobby. "…breakfast?" he replied, wondering if more than Duncan's floor had been rearranged after last night's escapade. "Where're you going?"

"Breakfast," he said smugly, "just like you." DJ raised an eyebrow at Duncan's I-know-something-you-don't-know smirk. "'Cept I'm getting there faster."

DJ was about to ask more when Duncan disappeared through a door down the hall. DJ jogged over to it and saw it bore a sign proclaiming "Employee Staircase" followed by a humorously long-winded but still menacing threat against the campers' wellbeing if any of them dared use it.

He swallowed hard and was still debating the legality of using the behind-the-scenes staircase when Duncan's voice emerged from behind the door a moment later, asking, "You coming or what, Brickhouse?"

Grinding his teeth a bit like he always did when he made a move he'd later regret, DJ looked both ways to make sure that no other soul would witness his transgression and, seeing that the hallway was still empty, swiftly pushed open the door and slid through to the other side. Duncan was preparing to slide down one of the handrails.

"About time, buddy!" he chuckled, picking his feet off the floor and expertly riding down to the second floor platform. DJ was hopping down after him (handrail sliding was an injury just waiting to happen!), spouting out some nervous advice he knew Duncan wouldn't follow when a door slammed shut at the foot of the stairwell—the foot of a place Duncan and DJ were not supposed to be.

DJ froze on the platform with a squeak as Duncan tramped on, seemingly unperturbed by the fact that trouble was brimming on the horizon. He was seriously considering making a run for it before someone found out about this misdemeanor, but Duncan just kept descending stairs as a dual set of footsteps started making their way up, accompanied by a hushed conversation DJ couldn't quite catch.

"Dude!" he hissed, sprinting behind Duncan to catch up (and possibly throw the shorter teen over his shoulder for a quicker getaway). "We gotta get outta here!" he whispered, just as the punk came to an easy stop and peered over the edge of the banister. DJ peeked around his shield's green Mohawk but couldn't see much down the spiraling stairs, though said shield held up two fingers. DJ supposed that meant there was not just one person to punish them but two. Chris and Chef? Camera-Crony and vengeful back-up? They were coming closer with every step they climbed. Maybe DJ would just turn himself in the honorable way, accept his punishment like a man.

He was so distracted formulating his confession that he hardly noticed when a pair of female interns, not too much older than the boys themselves, turned the corner and cut their climb and girl-talk abruptly short, shooting them quizzical looks.

DJ changed gears from composing a long-winded confession to trying to produce an excuse for his presence in the employee stairwell. But in the time it took him to pick out his words, Duncan took the reins, addressing the interns as he resumed his casual trek down the remaining flight. "Morning, ladies!"

DJ had no choice but to follow quietly behind, offering a nervous wave and half a smile.

The leading intern stared awkwardly at the pair of boys ahead of them as her colleague answered with a confused, "Uh, good morning…?"

The intern behind had pulled to a stop one step below the other; as DJ was guiltily trying to look anywhere but at their faces, he noted that in this position, she looked to be about the same height as her partner, maybe even taller. And as the girl trailing behind wasn't on her tip-toes, she had to be at least a head above the other on normal ground. It was like setting Mount Everest next to Wawanakwa Mountain. Or DJ next to Duncan, for that matter.

"Yeeeeeeah, sooooo…" The first intern turned slowly and, in what was probably supposed to be a whisper (though it sounded more like DJ's normal volume—through megaphone) leaned in to her colleague and asked, "are they allowed to be using the employee staircases?"

Apparently deciding that these two weren't of any danger, Duncan paused as well, leaning against the wall to cockily demand, "Well, who's going to stop us, sweetheart?" He looked over Megaphone to address Everest as well. "You?"

Appalled by his friend's rudeness (but somewhat comforted by the fact that he didn't appear at all alarmed), DJ stepped in front of the offender, hastily compromising, "Uh, we promise we won't, uh… use them anymore?" With a hopeful look in the pair's direction, he elbowed his partner in crime. "Right, Dunc?"

"Well…" Everest tapped her lips in thought, mimicking Duncan's position against the wall in a way that subtly suggested she was mocking him. "Chris gave us explicit instructions to barricade these doors against you people."

The female pair on the stairs exchanged a look and, after some sort of girly telepathy, shrugged.

"So," Everest continued, "I fully support your intrusion."

DJ relaxed for the split second it took him to realize that the girls where _sanctioning_ them to break the rules. He looked to Duncan to celebrate, but he was still staring at the girls, as if to make sure they didn't whip out any guns or tasers. "…Straight up?"

"Yeah," Megaphone sighed (loudly), crossing her arms nonchalantly. "If it was Chris's rule, then _eff_ _him_." Everest nodded as Megaphone smiled, turning back to the boys. "You're totally free to use them as you like," she offered.

Appalled by this blatant disregard of rules—for the second time in five minutes—DJ couldn't do more than sputter out, "Seriously?"

Everest shot them a conspiratorial smirk, murmuring, "We were never here."

Megaphone nodded, raising her eyebrows and her voice in earnest. "Believe me, if anyone hates that man more than his contestants, it's us: his interns." Instead of kicking off into a long and loud rant like DJ would expect of someone he'd dubbed Megaphone, she suddenly turned somber. "Especially after what happened to Billy." As a unit, the interns bowed their heads sorrowfully, silencing in lament. "That poor octopus," Megaphone burst out after a second. "He never had a fighting chance!"

Everest pushed off the wall, moving to comfort her friend before she teared up too badly. "I know you miss him, but remember what I told you?" She shot her friend the I-mean-business look DJ was used to getting from Duncan. "He's in a better place now."

"We had a secret handshake and everything!" she got out through her tears, accepting her friend's embrace (in the least awkward way possible).

Catching the drift of the conversation and sniffling a bit despite himself (octopi were so cute, and now one was dead? The creature probably hadn't even gotten a proper burial…), DJ barely choked out, "That's—that's so sad!"

Duncan seemed to be the only one in the stairwell who remained unaffected. "Awesome!" he called out, callously tramping down to the base of the stairs. "I'll be taking you up on that!"

DJ wiped the beginnings of a tear from his eye and counted to five in an effort to compose himself. "Uh, sorry about my friend," he apologized, gesturing vaguely in the direction Duncan had gone. He was pleased to find that his voice hadn't gone all squeaky yet. In an attempt to make amends for his punk friend's brusqueness, he added, "Um, would you ladies like to come down to breakfast with us?"

Everest waved off the offer, simultaneously handing Megaphone a pack of on-the-go tissues from her back pocket. DJ had just a second to wonder if tears were _that_ common among the Playa interns before she said, "Thanks, but we'll have to refuse your offer." She jerked her head in her contemporary's direction, where she stood thunderously honking into her second tissue. "We aren't allowed to eat with the cast members."

"Because we get in th-the shots!" Megaphone managed to get out before returning to her tissue blowing.

The look on Everest's face made it obvious: fancy breakfast was a morning activity that had been shot down before. "It's a little harder to get around that rule—" she lapsed into a grumble, "—seeing as they keep the videos in a steel-plated vault in an undisclosed location…"

DJ looked past Megaphone's attempts to pull herself back together and Everest's miffed mutterings to see Duncan with one hand on the door, exaggeratedly tapping a foot. DJ made a face that he hoped conveyed, "Gimme one second to get out of this without looking like the dirtbag _you_ did," though his still-watery eyes may have altered the message.

"Besides," Megaphone went on, providing yet another reason against breakfast as she collected herself with the change of topic. "We're stuck on clean-up duty now, aren't we?"

"God, yeah," Everest replied, crossly ushering Megaphone up the stairs at the memory of their actual job. As she passed DJ, she explained what he had already inferred. "Some idiot managed to single-handedly demolish two camper bedrooms and generate hundreds of dollars in structural damage last night."

Duncan, already pushing through the door to the lobby, paused at this. Smirking over his shoulder, he took the time to offer a sarcastic salute before shouting, "You're welcome!"

DJ made one last apologetic face before scampering after Duncan, skimming through the door just as it shut on the interns and their reactions to this admission.

"Duncan, dude," DJ started, glimpsing Duncan across the lobby and scampering after him, "I don't get why you gotta be so rude."

Duncan snorted, leaning in to examine the elaborate looped sign that pointed the way to the gym (though you had to already know where the gym was to understand where the arrow was really pointing). "And _I_ don't get why you have to hide behind me every time you hear a noise you don't recognize," he countered, giving up on the sign and picking a hallway at random.

"This way, Dunc."

Duncan had chosen the hallway that went directly to the dumpsters out back.

Now in the lead, DJ turned and said over his shoulder, "It's just, don't you think they deserve at least a _little_ respect?"

"No."

"I mean, they work for _Chris_," Deej continued. "He's their boss! Don't you feel kind of bad for them?"

"Nah."

DJ slowed his pace to let Duncan catch up, turning onto the hallway that would take them to the dining room with the least amount of trouble. "You don't?" DJ prodded, trying to pull something that _maybe_ resembled sympathy out of his friend. "Not at all?"

"No. At least they're getting paid, man," Duncan snorted.

DJ blinked. "No, they aren't."

"They're not?"

"No… They're interns. That's what it means."

Duncan considered this for a second. He then broke into an abrupt bout of sadistic laughter. "Whoa, well," he said between sniggers, "that sucks for them, hardcore!"

DJ was trying to decide whether or not that had been an adequate expression of compassion when he heard, from behind the door to the dining hall, a sound not so dissimilar to Chef plucking the feathers of a live chicken (which he had unfortunately heard before). Casting one inquiring look in Duncan's direction (to which he responded with a "How the hell should I know?" look), DJ grabbed the brass doorknob and pushed inside the room.

* * *

The first thing that registered with Duncan was that the volume of the chicken-in-pain sounds increased tenfold. The second thing he realized was that they were coming from Beth's mouth. He stood there for a moment trying to find a melody somewhere in the toneless noise that he supposed must be a song and had narrowed Beth's choice down to one of two atrocities by the time it wrapped up. He wasn't disappointed when she finished.

After resting his ears for a moment, Duncan tore himself away from the trainwreck in a side ponytail and turned to appraise the Breakfast Ballroom. It looked like a room you were designed to hate.

It was by _far_ the snootiest room in the hotel, and Playa was already pretty snooty to start. It had a high, sloping ceiling painted a charming pale blue that Duncan personally despised. Hanging from it were three crystal chandeliers, which took the light from the windows and threw it back on the wall in sparkles that hurt your eyes. The windows themselves were less windows as they were a wall of glass broken up by the occasional window-pane, and they provided a view of the pool deck and, beyond that, the ocean.

Fill such a room with tablecloth-covered round tables and elaborate-backed chairs and it couldn't help but look like a scene out some badly-done period movie. The only thing that made the room worthwhile was the 60-inch plasma flat screen television mounted on the far wall and the view of girls in bathing suits, summer loungewear, or a set of pajamas.

"So, dude," DJ asked, backtracking to where Duncan still stood. "Whaddaya think?"

Blinking away from the sight of Lindsay in a bikini, Duncan declined to comment on the overall gag factor of the ballroom. "I was trying to come up with a good enough insult for that song, but…" He looked up at his friend, a mock concerned look passing over his features. "I… I don't think I can."

DJ probably didn't approve, but Duncan was already back to scanning the room. "I'm sure you'll think of one eventua—"

"Holy crap!" he shouted as an afterthought, cutting off his friend, eyes suddenly fixed on the half of the room opposing the windows. "Look at all that _food!" _

He took off sprinting for the buffet table without a second thought, leaving DJ alone in the doorway, wondering how on earth Duncan could possibly muster up so much excitement for breakfast when he wouldn't even hold a civil conversation with a pair of interns.

"Um, Duncan? I was in line."

Duncan snorted at Beth's attempt at boldness, slapping a couple fried eggs on his mountain of French toast. After loading that onto his tray and moving on to the gigantic collection of doughnuts, he replied, "Yeah, and I could sing better than you with my nose plugged, underwater." He thought for a moment and added, "After getting my _tonsils_ out. What's your point?"

Beth glared at him in flustered indignation. "…No _cutsies_!" She turned to the blonde behind her for backup. "Right, Lindsay?"

"Huh?"

Seeing as the matter no longer concerned him, Duncan moved straight past the exotic fruit platter and started in on the waffles, pancakes, and assorted syrups. And when he'd grabbed enough of that to fill up the extra space on his tray (not that it was that hard. Most of it was already occupied by his first two plates and a glass of chocolate milk), he grabbed a second tray and began sorting through the pile of Snaptarts.

Duncan had to admit, this breakfast buffet was _way _more awesome than he'd ever expected; he almost felt sorry he'd skipped it the past few days. Because really, he mused as he snatched up three biscuits and size-appropriate sausage patties, every breakfast food he could _think _of was represented, set up neatly on dishes of every size and shape (though by the time Duncan was finished serving himself, they were considerably less neat.)

Duncan shoved half a pancake in his mouth as he filled up a glass of orange juice and found that, even better than the pure variety the buffet offered: it was all edible. _Good_, even.

As he came to the end of the buffet table, he scanned the room for a place to hunker down, one tray balanced on each arm—he had picked up intense balancing skills after being forced into a job as a busboy earlier in life, and while it had been short-lived (he'd punched a customer. But the man had _totally_ had it coming), the skill remained.

Duncan was a bit dismayed to find that DJ had abandoned him for a place with Tyler and Cody by the windows, but a second later he decided he didn't care—DJ had always been a bit of a floater. Plus, Lindsay and Beth were on their way over. Even Deej wasn't worth sitting through a whole meal with those two.

Noah, Izzy, and Eva sat at a table beside them. Two out of three looked completely miserable, and the other one was way too into a story to realize she was the cause of the misery. But not two seconds after the thought had passed through his head, Eva snatched a glass from the table, eyed Izzy for a millisecond, and shoved it into her open mouth.

Noah turned and started in on a halfhearted scolding, but even Duncan could see that Izzy using a fork and spoon to tap out Morse Code was better than Izzy running her mouth.

Heather sat in a corner by herself, picking at a bowl of granola and glaring at anyone and everyone who walked past. She was noticeably balder than when Duncan had left her with Leshawna. He would have to congratulate Leshawna later.

On the opposite end of the room sat Leshawna, Trent, and Justin, with Katie and Sadie squeezed in on either side of Pretty Boy. Duncan might have gone over to offer Leshawna a congratulatory fist-pound for her work on Heather last night had he not been carrying enough breakfast for five normal people and a bear.

He was about to accept the idea that he'd be chilling with Trent and Leshawna for the next few minutes when his eyes fell on the final occupied table out of five, smack in the middle: as if the other four were merely its satellites.

It was only fitting.

* * *

"Morning, Princess!" a voice greeted, accompanied by the unmistakable clatter that followed Duncan everywhere. "Sleep well?" he asked, his voice superficially cheerful. "Any _peas _under your mattress?"

Carefully lowering her newspaper's official report on the Toronto stock exchange so as not to douse it in fruit juice and syrup—the only indication that there had ever been food on her plate—she shot him a deadly glare. Of course Duncan would take it upon himself to pester everyone waiting for Chef to deliver the most recent episode's footage from the island. Shoving down her annoyance, she responded with a deceptively civil, "None actually, _peasant. _Just a pain in my _ass_."

"See, I was wonderingwhy you looked like you rolled off the wrong side of _life_ this morning, your highness," he replied with a irrepressible grin. "Or were your _rented _pajamas giving you too many ideas to sleep?" He winked and started in on the plate loaded up only with pancakes.

Courtney was not amused by the implication _or _his eating habits. "Firstly," she started, rigidly and regretfully folding her newspaper, "the only wrong side of my bed is the side you so unceremoniously _contaminated_." She placed the paper down behind her empty plate. "Secondly, the only way your stupid, stowaway shirt could have cost me any sleep—_which it didn't!—_would be due to the nasty stench that emanates from it. Though really," she went on, giving him a distasteful once-over as he shoveled maple blueberry goodness into his mouth, "I'm shocked you even own more than one shirt."

The delinquent waggled his eyebrow at her and managed to respond through a mouthful of pancakes, "Disappointed, even?" pulling up the edge of his shirt to reveal one third of his six-pack.

Readying an indignant reply and a quick grab for something to stab him with (a fork would do just fine), Courtney was sidetracked by a light kick to her shin. Whirling around to Bridgette on her right, Courtney glared at her best friend for the first time since that title had been applied. "_What?"_ she silently demanded, as Duncan went to work on a patchwork variety of breakfast eggs.

Unperturbed by the brunette's ferocious eyes, Bridgette nodded her head once in Duncan's direction, instead sending her best friend a simple, implicating look. Courtney would've sworn then that Bridgette was telepathic because suddenly, the blonde's voice rang out in her memory, repeating the words from the night before.

"_He's _crazy _about you."_

Then, as if she really _had _just retrieved those very words from the depths of Courtney's brain, Bridgette looked to her hand, intertwined with Geoff's, and then gestured back at Duncan with her head. Telepathy would have been superfluous, as Bridgette's instruction was crystal clear: _Just TRY, Courtney._

If it had been anyone else, Courtney would have merely stabbed _them _with her fork before going to work on Duncan. But because it was Bridgette, her boy-savvy best friend who implied it, _and_ because somewhere deep inside of her (SO deep, in fact, she wouldn't even acknowledge the place existed) Courtney really _did_ want to believe her, the future politician took a deep breath, preparing to pull from her depleted reserves of patience. Placing her fork back squarely on her plate, she begrudgingly muttered something unintelligible.

"Wazzat, schweetheart?" Duncan asked through a mouthful of hash browns, oblivious to the female exchange that had just occurred.

"I asked…how _you _slept," Courtney repeated with some noticeable difficulty, watching the pleased grin spread across Bridgette's face out of the corner of her eye.

He shrugged, too hungry to take particular note of Courtney's change of temperament or the pain it caused her. Gulping down the very last of his waffles and pulling forward his next two plates (one with varying preparations of bacon, the other with a leg of ham), he responded clearly, "Eh. Not too bad, bunking with DJ and his parasite. Although," he grinned, grabbing his ham, "also not the sexiest thing I've woken up to on this island."

Bridgette released Geoff's hand to restrain Courtney, whose limited patience had just that quickly run its course, leaving her lunging for utensils/weapons. Gripping her wrists to keep her from stabbing Duncan with the knife she sported and was threatening to use, Bridgette commenced a series of soothing gestures which, despite her calm, seemed to ask, "You're not _really_ trying, are you?"

Courtney was saved from answering when the door banged open, revealing Ezekiel in his usual garb: sunglasses, chain, and outrageous amounts of swag. And before anyone could stop him from walking into the lion's den, he'd walked straight over to Heather.

"Morning, Heather," he said cheerily. "Wazzup, eh?"

She took about a quarter of a second to analyze him before sneering, "Who the hell are you?"

Zeke froze halfway through pulling out a chair, confused and more than a little surprised. "Uh, it's Ezekiel, bro. We—"

"Oh my god," she interrupted, repulsion quickly spreading across her features. "You're one of Chris's stupid interns aren't you? Are you even allowed to _be_ here?" She started flapping her hands like she was shooing away a pesky critter. "Get away from my table before I report you!"

Courtney, having gone limp against Bridgette's restraint, turned from the both hilarious and poetic justice in front of her and locked eyes with Duncan. His expression matched hers so well that she momentarily forgot she'd just been trying to stab him.

Seeing as Ezekiel had lost the power of speech and Heather was looking for answers, Lindsay fell into her old role as informant and said, "Heather, he was one of _us_," gesturing to the campers around her. "He just got voted off first…right?"

Neither hearing nor caring, Heather continued her steady stream of superiority. "Did you hear me or has your brain damage already reached the point of retardation?" she screamed, slamming her fists on the table. "SCRAM!"

He released the chair as if it had burned him and, with a miserable glance at Heather, turned back to the door he'd come through.

"Hey, Zeke!" Beth called, waving him down and pulling out a chair. "You can come th'it with _us." _She eyed Heather with immense distaste before adding, "You wouldn't want to th'it with a meanie like her anyway."

Courtney glanced at Bridgette's grip on her wrists, delicately "_ahem_"ed, and was promptly released. "I'm sorry," she began primly, trying to repress the grin that she and Duncan still shared. "What was the question?"

And in the strangled voice of someone trying not to burst out into laughter, Duncan asked, "Um…why are you so hot?"

Bridgette tensed, ready to spring back into action, but Courtney merely gripped her knife and fork more tightly. "Maybe," Courtney forced out, all traces of a smile gone, "because _my_ night would have been a whole lot better if I could've traded your chainsaw for a working fan." She set down the fork, but kept a grip on the knife just in case. "Might as well be in South America, scorching as this place is."

"Well," Duncan replied, gulping down his latest mouthful, "_I'd _personally pick the chainsaw." And in explanation he offered, "I plan on moving to South America anyway."

Geoff always tried his best not to interrupt his friends' quasi-arguments, but he couldn't help but ask, "…Why?"

And then, quite matter-of-factly, as if he'd been hoping for just that question, Duncan replied, "Because Canada sucks."

"Canada doesn't suck!" Courtney shouted in indignation. Turning to him so that one elbow rested on the table, she asked, "Why would you say such a thing?"

Instead of offering her a well-thought out and logical response like she would have liked, Duncan instead seemed to take this as an opportunity to list everything he hated about life in general. "Taxes, traffic, douchebags, a unified police force, standardized government—"

"Um, newsflash," Courtney inserted. "South America has all that too."

"—the only season I've ever experienced is winter, our flag is ugly and the anthem's stupid, I've been learning French since the third grade and still can't find a good use for it, and because of this, half the world thinks we're French anyway, which we're not. And the half that _doesn't _think that just sees us as the States' hat."

"But…" Courtney was shocked that so many negative things about her country could potentially be true. "Yeah, but…" Finding herself unable to explicitly disprove those accusations, she decided to make an argument all her own. "Well, we have gorgeously diverse scenery, an excellent hockey team, low crime rate, a successful _albeit_ flawed social welfare system, and our maple syrup is positively _sublime_." She figured this would really hit home, seeing as Duncan was transporting maple syrup (with a side of waffles) to his mouth at that very instant. "Not to mention, dozens of well-respected international celebrities are Canadian."

"Name one," Duncan challenged, sucking some maple syrup off the tip of his pinky finger. (Not that Courtney noticed.)

"Ryan Reynolds."

"Let me rephrase that," he said. "One who's _cool."_

"Avril Lavigne?" She'd always seemed pretty badass, and that was, essentially, Duncan's definition of cool.

"Hot," he responded, "but a total sell-out."

"Okay… Wayne Gretzky." Duncan opened his mouth to challenge that as well, but she talked right over him_. _"Retired pro ice hockey player, former coach, nicknamed '_The Great One_', dubbed 'the greatest hockey player ever' by multiple players, sportswriters, and the freaking NHL itself. Also—"

He held up a hand before she could finish reciting the Wikipedia entry. "Your hockey knowledge freaks me the hell out, Princess, but it doesn't prove your point."

She sighed. "What about Shania Twain?"

"No."

"Celin—"

"NO," Duncan replied, his eyes widening slightly in panic.

Courtney took pity on his poor soul, throwing out "Alanis Morrisette?" instead.

"That ironic chick?" he asked, rocking back on his chair and resting his feet up on the table.

"Yes."

"No. She's an embarrassment to Canadians everywhere."

As Courtney flailed for yet another internationally recognized celebrity, it suddenly dawned on Geoff to offer, "Pamela Anderson, bro!" Tipping his hat, he elaborated, "Actress, model, _showgirl_," outlining womanly curves with his hands. But when Duncan gestured for him to look at Bridgette, and Geoff noticed the hardened glare that had overcome her expression, he amended, "But she doesn't even _compare _to the hotness of my snuggly vanilla soy dolphin!"

Courtney furrowed her eyebrows as the pet name sent Bridgette curling up against Geoff's side once more and Duncan mimed upchucking onto his plate. "Okay, weird," he said, directing the conversation away from dolphins and back to hot models. "But _her_ I approve of. The only downside is… _she's Canadian_."

"And _you're _recalcitrant."

Duncan smirked, licking the leftover maple syrup off the closest of his plates. "You know it, peaches."

Courtney huffed, flapping open her newspaper and sinking down behind it to avoid having to deal with _a_) any more of Duncan's idiocy on her left or _b_) Bridgette's unnervingly therapeutic gaze to her right.

She was _definitely_ in for a long day.

* * *

But really, when is she not?

**From strayphoenix: **At last! Chapter 19! You can already begin to imagine how sorry we are for the wait. But, as with all great masterpieces, there reaches a point when the authors has to stop and ask themselves, "DAMN. Did we really do this?" and "HOLY CRAP. How are we ever going to top this?"

Rina and found the answers to these questions to be, "Well, I THINK so. I mean, our names are on it, right?" and "We're going to try something a little different."

From here on out, TAOP is going to get a little more interesting. It's still the same story with the same cast and the same drama we all love to read about. But Courtney's going to get a bit more spotlight as our principal narrator, as this second 'arc' of the story concerns her some more. And as you might have figured, Hurricane Heather isn't going to be leaving Playa untouched. Not by a LONG shot. ;)

So strap on your foil skates and fasten your CIT panties, because you're in for another crazy saga on...

The ART...of PRETENDING...it ISN'T...your FAULT! (Chris does it so much better :P)

**From Contemperina: **All right! It's been so long, I fear I've forgotten how to write a decent author's note (if I ever knew in the first place…) But it's good to be back, and back on track. We'd promise that the next chapter will come more quickly than the last one did, but the past two times we've done that and been proven liars, so I'll refrain from jinxing this story and just say that we're working as quickly as we can.

You may or may not have noticed that there are also a plethora of Easter Eggs hidden (or not-so-hidden) throughout this chapter. If you want to hear something funny, it's because we were originally planning to post this around Easter. That didn't really work out… But see if you can find them all! Chapter 19 is scattered with pop culture references galore.

And finally, she's too humble to say it, but **stray** has her birthday this week. Wish her a happy one! You could even put it in a review if you'd like to kill two birds with one stone… (:

* * *

Have fun on your Easter Egg hunt. We're interested to see if anyone catches the biggest of them all…

Thanks for reading! Please review (:


	20. Never make a deal with the devil

Sporadic update… check! See, we TOLD you we were still working on TAOP :)

If you'll recall, when we left Courtney, she'd been part of Duncan's reason for cutting a hole in the roof of Heather's room and then had to deal with the resulting mess at breakfast. And now, we learn her fate…

* * *

**Chapter 20: Never make a deal with the devil **

Without warning, Chef burst through the main door, kicking it open with all the ferocity of a fireman rushing in to quench a perilous fire. And while the ballroom was not at all on fire, everyone _did _feel quite imperiled by the Marine's arrival.

Duncan jumped at the slam (as did almost everyone else in the room), and his precariously tipped chair passed the point of no return, at which time gravity took over. He came down with all the grace of an elephant and was left sprawled on the floor, the tip of his Mohawk brushing the leg of Trent's chair.

Courtney had been expecting the interruption (this was how Chef usually started their episode-previewing mornings) and was consequently composed—except for a legitimate disappointment that Duncan's skull had missed an opportunity to connect with another solid object. Bridgette sighed suspiciously loudly in her direction, and Courtney hastily rearranged her expression reflect her "Not Thinking About Duncan" mindset.

"Listen up maggots!" Hatchet bellowed as he stalked across the room to stand under the flat screen TV on the far wall, holding up a DVD disc so swiftly he almost threw it at the ceiling. "This here's the latest episode of your pathetic lives on tape!"

"You _do_remember your pathetic life is on that tape too," Noah reminded him from where he stood atop his seat. He and Eva were trying to pull a stuck glass out of its lodging between Izzy's teeth. Yet while this would have cut off the oxygen intake of any other person, Izzy's brain appeared unaffected.

"DID I ASK TO HEAR YOUR WHINING?" Chef bellowed in Noah's direction. With his free hand, he slammed at the wall under the beautifully sleek TV, so close that Cody's nerdy heart nearly had a palpitation. "Because I DISTINCTLY remember _NOT _drowning you on the boat ride here!"

"And we so _sincerely _appreciate your generosity," Courtney mumbled, setting down her newspaper as Duncan casually bounced back to his feet, as if he'd wholly meant to end up spread eagled across the floor. Before he sat, he flipped the chair around so he could straddle the seat and crossed his arms over the top. It wasn't until he eyed his waffles through the intricate backing that he realized his suave maneuver would make finishing his breakfast a challenge.

"This new episode's called 'Camp Castaways' after that famous volleyball movie," Chef barked over various scornful mumblings, a DVD player descending from the ceiling. "In an _accidental _challenge of instinct and flood survival, the final four dimwitted contestants—"

But before Chef could get into what the four dimwits had done, and before Courtney could get a _real _chance to appreciate the looks of annoyance on Duncan and Heather's faces, a sound similar to a giant vinyl record being scratched rang out across the room, followed by a loud _POP! _as all the lights in the ballroom went out.

This in turn was followed by an ear piercing scream, quite obviously from Lindsay. Obviously, because even though the lights had gone out, the sun was still shining high and bright through the floor to ceiling windows and the situation really wasn't frightening at all.

"FLAMING ELECTRIC DOODADS!"Chef roared at the half-descended DVD player, which he might have reached if he jumped for it. His voice went suddenly low and icy. "This has something to do with _YOU,_" he hissed accusingly, whirling around to point in the direction of Duncan and Courtney's table. "Somehow this is_ YOUR FAULT!"_

Realizing he was caught sitting at the guilty table (_well_ within the range of becoming collateral damage), Geoff immediately lunged at Bridgette for an impromptu make-out session of innocence. With a similar guilty third-party revelation, Trent 'accidentally' dropped his napkin and hurriedly disappeared under his table, leaving Leshawna confused and in the middle of what she had thought was a very engaging story.

As opposed to cowering and hiding to deny all involvement with the incident, Courtney took the opportunity to glare at Duncan as well, vainly hoping that perhaps the accusations from both parties might break him into some sort of confession. "Well, what do you have to say for yourself?"

"That I couldn't agree with Chef more!" Duncan chirped as he turned to Courtney beside him, resting his chin on the back of his reversed chair. He met her steely glare and disapproving look with a smirk. "What_ever _are we going to do with you?"

With Bridgette occupied, Courtney would have had no obstacles in taking her frustration out on Duncan's Mohawk (namely by separating it from his scalp), but a venom-soaked voice interrupted their customary morning spat.

"_Ugh_, I _just _ate. Quit flirting and get a room," Heather snarled from her lonely table, sending the couple a look of utmost loathing. The many hours spent in the shower removing sawdust and plaster from her person must have dissuaded her from pretending to be involved with Duncan. Anything to prevent _more _buildings being dropped on you in the middle of the night…

"Mine happens to be under _construction_," Duncan replied cheekily over his shoulder, smirking darkly in her direction. "Unless you're offering yours_…_?"

Courtney rolled her eyes for show and was about to shift her seat away from Duncan's general area when she realized Geoff and Bridgette were still making out passionately on her other side. Talk about being stuck between a rock and a hard place. Or at least a place that was hard to watch without cringing.

At last the backup generators kicked in (better late than never) with the sound of a revving Monster Truck. A second terrified shriek from Lindsay went ignored as Chef carried on to give a most bizarre recounting of the show that only _vaguely_ resembled what the contestants present had actually experienced. It wasn't until he was done explaining Chris's starring role in a prehistoric dinosaur movie and mentioned how their arrival at the staff camp had interrupted his blue-ribbon gumbo that Duncan and Heather _finally _caught on to which episode Chef was attempting to summarize.

The latter jumped to her feet as soon as the recognition settled. "_Ohhh, _no! There isn't enough power or money on the _planet_ to make me re-watch _that _horror again. I'm out of here!"

Leaving her scant breakfast on the table without making a motion to clear it, Heather stormed out of the ballroom with the air of finality she was known for, pausing only to shove Ezekiel out of his chair in a fit of anger. And as every camper watched her leave, they were overwhelmed with the intense desire to watch any episode (multiple times, if possible) that publicly humiliated Heather so thoroughly.

"What exactly… _happened _in that episode?" Courtney asked curiously, turning from the slamming ballroom door to the only other person present at the time of filming.

Duncan shrugged. He was finishing the last of his breakfast plates (what was once sausages) through the slats in his chair and cared more about that than listening to Heather's hissy fit. "Eh, I think there was a storm or something and we got shipwrecked in our cabins on a dinosaur island. The girls thought we were being hunted, but I knew it was a scam all along."

"Riiight," Courtney drawled, rolling her eyes. "Just like you knew the Celine standee possessed neither motor abilities nor any actual _threat_ all along?"

"Exac—" Duncan started confidently, but stopped as his thoughts caught up to him. "Hey, that is an irrational fear! Which _you_ should know all about, _green jello_."

Courtney's only response was a dignified 'harrumph' of some volume. The room was beginning to darken—Chef was forcefully pulling down the window blinds as they spoke—so she turned from Duncan to begin the chore that was prying Bridgette and Geoff apart before the screening started. "Well, it'll be worth the watch just to see what has Heather so perturbed," she went on, savoring the image of Duncan's indignation in her mind's eye.

"Yeah, well she sure has something to be perturbed _about_," Duncan snickered, stacking his last plate on top of the others. "I mean, Owen's stupid confession gimmick actually got her to—"

Duncan froze.

"Got her… to what?" the brunette asked, distracted by her unsuccessful attempts to wrestle Geoff and Bridgette off each other. "Geoff, give her _back_! He's going to start the episode any second now!"

But Duncan hadn't heard her. Instead, he was slowly running through _exactly _what had been said and done in that episode—and wondered exactly how much of it had made it through to the semi-final cut. Shockingas the fact was, and despite what he'd boasted to Courtney, he _hadn't _been sure whether they were on camera or not during their 'bonding' in the tree house. Which meant if Chris actually _had _been recording them—and Heather seemed pretty convinced he had been…

Everyone in that room was about to find out what he went to juvy for.

He had to get Courtney out of there.

His brain shuddered into overdrive, searching for an excuse to get her out of the room before the episode started. He looked from the door to the buffet, to the pool outside. What did Courtney take more seriously than anything else?

"Guys, as a CIT, I'm ordering you to get _off _each other before one or both of you suffocates!"

Of _course_! Duncan had to appeal to her instinctual need to boss people around and save them from themselves! The pool was right there. Could he jump in the pool and pretend to drown? Could he drown someone else? Could he drown _her? _She'd be able to revive herself, right? They probably taught CITs how to do that…

Chef, having forcefully inserted the disc into the player, was now cursing out the remote for not marking the power button more obviously. Most of the campers had turned their seats around to the TV, though some, led by Izzy, chose to sit on the floor kindergarten style. And Courtney, unbeknownst to her, saved herself from a very possible drowning by getting to her feet.

"Fine, _don't _separate!" she shouted at the back Bridgette's head. "Just—just stall Chef until I get back from the bathroom!"

She sprinted briskly to the ballroom doors, sliding through them without a second thought, only the lobby restroom on her mind. As soon as she stepped out into the hall, however, the doors behind her slammed shut on her heels. Courtney yipped in surprise and whirled around in time to hear the lock click loudly into place and what sounded like a chair being propped up against the door.

"Wha—_HEY__!_" she yelled in outrage. Gripping the door handles with both hands, she pulled against them with her entire weight, to no avail.

"Sorry, Princess!" Duncan's voiced called from beyond the door, mischievous as always. "No admittance once the show's started!"

"DUNCAN!" She slammed her shoulder up against the door like she'd seen them do in cop shows, but it only resulted in a bruised shoulder. "Duncan, open this door _right_ now! I haven't missed a single episode since I got here!" She got nothing in response. "DUNCAN!"

Promptly abandoning the door to avoid further injury (to her shoulder, not the door), she ran around to the pool-deck doors in hopes of signaling another camper in the ballroom, but she stopped halfway through the doorframe, remembering that the blinds had been drawn for the show. Courtney stood in the door, fuming, as she tried to visualize Playa's blueprints, aiming to highlight the ballroom's points of entry before she missed too much of the show.

Unfortunately, the two mugs of coffee, cup of water, and glass of orange juice she'd already consumed that morning had other ideas. With a grudging resolve, Courtney decided she'd dash to the bathroom first, then focus on finding her way back into the ballroom (was vent-crawling an option?) before Duncan burnt it down without her supervision.

* * *

A few minutes later, Courtney was in the middle of an immaculate hand washing, focusing intently as she scrubbed and prepared for espionage. She was so busy considering all the ballroom's access points that she hardly noticed when the door clicked open and allowed in a second figure.

Heather didn't make any sign of recognition aside from rolling her eyes at Courtney's hunched figure before walking three faucets over and balancing a small tote in the dry sink. Only upon turning to dry her hands, wondering if greasing an air-vent open would permanently stain her hands/tie her to the crime, did Courtney spot Heather.

"Are you lost?" Courtney asked pointedly, her adversary standing in front of the fluorescently lighted bathroom mirror, trying to adjust a decidedly untrendy cap over her cleanly bald head. "The Socially Insulting Headwear Convention is the next building over."

"Oh, you mean right next to the Uptight Sociopaths in Training Convention?" Heather shot back, her eyes never leaving her own reflection. "I hear you're giving the big lecture."

Courtney huffed. Oh, how she had _not _missed having to deal with Heather. "What are you _doing _in here? Don't you have a mirror in your room? Or did it _crack _when you looked at it?"

"Your boyfriend remodeledmy room, _remember_?" she snapped. Heather tried turning the baseball cap around but it only accentuated her baldness. Letting out a strangled shriek of rage, she pulled the cap off and ripped it apart at the seams before pulling another from her tote.

Involuntarily, Courtney tensed at the 'B' word, correcting Heather before she realized the queen bee had probably used it on purpose. "Duncan is _not _my boyfriend! You of all people should know that_._"

And while Heather believed Courtney's repeated denials no more than anyone else, she did voice her opinions regarding them much more cruelly. "_Please_. You were practically stripping him with your eyes at breakfast. You two have a _comfy _night together?"

The always proper CIT resented the mirror across from her for revealing exactly how hard she blushed at the implication. "We didn't—! He _didn't _sleep in my room!" she insisted. "He slept—" But she had to stop upon realizing she _didn't_ exactly know where Duncan had gone to spend the rest of the night.

"You know what?" Courtney spat, changing the topic and turning from both the mirror and Heather. "I don't need this, _especially _not from you." As the brunette strode toward the door, she declared, "If you'll excuse me, I have an episode to view."

"Hurry up or you'll miss the part where your boyfriend spills his big, bad secret!"

To her credit, it took a great deal of Courtney's self control to keep heading for the exit as she had been before, her pace only slowing slightly. Masking the curiosity in her voice rather well, she said, "Nice try, Heather. Duncan's about as open as you are piliferous."

"It's your own fault if you don't believe me," Heather said, taking the advanced vocabulary in stride. Her tone was gently swinging from biting harshness to the more artificially sincere tone she used when baiting an innocent soul as she pulled out a beanie from the tote and discarded it immediately. "I, for one, found it absolutely _stunning _that he still got sent to Juvenile Hall for what he did, since his parents are law enforcement and all that."

Only now did Courtney stop and twist back to Heather, who hadn't so much as turned around, occupied as she was trying to position the last three or four strands of hair left on her head.

"You don't know what got him sent to juvy," Courtney challenged, trying her very hardest to make the phrase a statement instead of a question.

"Of course I do," Heather said simply, still not looking at Courtney (though the CIT had a suspicion she was being watched through some complex combination of mirror angles). "We were all delirious and starving and crazy, and Owen convinced us we were going to die. Of _course_he told us his deepest and most secret confession."

"And you told them yours," Courtney assumed, abandoning all pretences of exiting the restroom. "Which is why you left before the showing."

It mustn't have been a huge leap, because Heather didn't even try to deny it. "_Duh_."

Courtney had no idea why she said the next three words. She had no clue what possessed her, what made her think it was a good idea to ask, albeit hesitantly, "What was _his_?"

Finally, Heather stopped pretending to fix the hair she didn't have and turned slowly to face Courtney, her expression more than a little devious. "Oh? You mean he hasn't told you? Maybe he really _isn't _your boyfriend."

The way she said the last bit almost conned Courtney into contradicting her on principle. Luckily, she caught herself in time and asked instead, "How do I know you're not bluffing?"

Heather leaned against the sink counter, glancing down at her nails. "I'd be _more_ than happy to tell you," Heather stated, clear as day. "Secrecy swears are so _childish_. And I really do need to spill their dirt before they spill mine…

"But," she went on, and as Heather's gaze rose to meet the CIT's, Courtney saw the ultimatum she'd expected to find there, "what can you give me in return?"

Her face must have shown, too plainly, just how much she wanted the information. Courtney hastened to correct the emotional breach by verbally diminishing Heather's monopoly on the information. "You know, I _can _just go back to the ballroom and catch it on tape."

Heather merely smiled. "Nice thought, but I'm sure the discussion has been cropped for time, if it's even shown at _all."_She shrugged. "You're really not getting any guarantees. That tree house _was _pretty secluded, not to mention water damaged. Who knows if those cameras managed to survive…"

Courtney crossed her arms, resolving to at least test the waters before she made any decisions. "And just _what _is the asking price on this information?"

The former raven head's eyes narrowed, all haughty playfulness vanishing from her expression. With a manicured finger, she pointed to her scalp. "One guess."

Courtney couldn't help but snort. "Hair? You want _hair _in exchange for Duncan's secret?"

"If you aren't interested in the exchange…" she continued swiftly, snatching her (now empty) tote from the sink and walking towards the door behind Courtney. In one movement, the brunette threw out her arm to halt the other's departure.

"You tell me the secret before I give you the hair," Courtney clarified. "Otherwise, no deal."

Heather peered at her, only a half meter away. The two girls spent a solid minute sizing each other up, weighing all their options, trying to get around the shaky compromise that had been presented.

At last, Heather took a step closer to Courtney and, as if afraid someone could hear them, hissed, "If anything goes wrong, _Court, _you will be held personally responsible." She narrowed her eyes, an unsaid threat hanging in the air.

Courtney stared back, undaunted. "I wouldn't expect anything less_._"

There were no handshakes, no pacts, no 'childish swears' as Heather had put it. No further specifications. Both girls had put their pride on the line, and when it came to shady dealings, they both understood: that was enough. Courtney withdrew her arm and Heather walked out, her bald head held high.

Only when the door had shut and the echo had died from the bathroom lounge did the gravity of what Courtney had just agreed to dawn on her. What had she done?

And more importantly, where on Earth was she going to get _hair_?

* * *

There's probably an app for that.

**From strayphoenix**: Sorry for everyone who I told we'd have this out earlier. We really did intend to have it up for our two year anniversary but school suddenly got VERY difficult on both our ends. How did the universe manage to coordinate THAT?

But anyway, you can't say we don't reward you for your long and patient waits, can you? :D No filler chapters in this roller coaster, I tell you! It's like taking a tea break in the middle of the second loop of the Hulk rollercoaster. LUDICROUS.

And for the record, there is no need to panic as TAOP will always be ongoing unless we say otherwise. Neither of us are saying 'otherwise' anytime soon :)

Until our next sporadic update!

-stray

**From Contemperina: **Happy Groundhog Day's Eve! Oh, we Americans and our silly holidays centering around the misrepresentation of animals…

Chapter updates have become a rarity nowadays, but we do hope you enjoyed this one. Courtney and Heather: vicious pairing of the century, don't you agree? And about Duncan—you can't say he doesn't seize an opportunity when he sees it! If only I possessed the same combination of wit, guts, and recklessness.

Just kidding. That's the kind of thing that gets you sent to Juvenile Hall. OR IS IT?

Until next time,

~Rina

* * *

For our sanity and yours, please remember that TAOP is ALWAYS ongoing until further notice. And despite the radio silence, know that we still freak out with joy every time we hear from a reader in a review or otherwise.

Thanks for reading! Please review (:


	21. Never overlook your other options

**Rule 21 – Never overlook your other options**

And just when you thought there was no hope: another update!

If you'll recall, when we left Courtney, Duncan had locked her out of the weekly episode viewing, which allowed her to make a deal with Heather in which she'd exchange a wig for information about Duncan's past. And now, we learn her fate…

* * *

It was an impossible feat.

As Heather sauntered away, a single thought descended upon Courtney with all the grace of a careening boulder: she had just made a deal with the devil. It had seemed like a strategic business contract as the words exited her mouth, but now that she thought about it, perhaps this hadn't been the best idea. Courtney didn't have the first _clue_ where to start searching for a wig (of all things). Besides, what if she failed? She'd entered into a _binding_ contract; her reputation was on the line! Not to mention she was liable to wake up one morning with her hair cut off and glued to Heather's scalp if she didn't come up with something.

As she followed Heather's path out to the lounge, it dawned upon her that she was playing with fire. It would be in her best interest to back out now, before Heather made it out of her sight and the opportunity was gone for good. She opened her mouth to call out. But…

The CIT hated herself for it, but she really _did_ want to know what had landed Duncan in juvy. More than she would ever admit aloud. She wanted _(needed!)_ to know what had happened, since it was obviously such a critical part of whom he was. And she only needed to understand this because some analytical Nazi part of her was thoroughly convinced that understanding Duncan was the first step toward kicking her convoluted feelings towards him in the face. With steel-toed boots.

Courtney's mouth snapped shut as Heather turned a corner, a twitch of her hand indicating that she had barely managed to repress a hair-flip of triumph.

The brunette huffed and turned around, setting off in the opposite direction. Returning to the dining hall to view the latest episode wasn't an option since Duncan had locked the door. And, taking a mental inventory of the tables, she concluded that the entire cast was in there with him, the grand exception being Heather. And herself.

But Courtney was determined to make use of this time (after all, if she sat alone doing nothing, didn't that mean Duncan had won?) and subsequently set off, destination not in mind but hopefully in formulation. She'd read that wandering labyrinths was soothing and encouraged brain function, and if Playa wasn't a labyrinth she didn't know _what_ was.

Courtney began to make her way through the paradise labyrinth, taking turns on a whim as she debated her situation. A few minutes into her journey of thought and discovery, she realized that, if it came down to it, she could make Heather a wig out of hair from the showers. If she were nice about it, she might even be able to convince Lindsay or Sadie to do the dirty work for her. The wig would be multi-toned and ratty, but wasn't that what Heather deserved anyway?

Doors and unfamiliar hall décor were passing her on either side, but her brainstorming was going far too well to turn back. What if Chris had a horse on the island? Sure, it wasn't exactly a horse-conducive habitat, but sad as it was, she wouldn't put it past Chris to have a pony cooped up somewhere for him to ride around on when his Napoleonic complex kicked in. He certainly had the inferiority aspect of it—why else would anyone use so much hair gel? And if Courtney asked the right questions, she could probably figure out if and where they were keeping the poor thing. Most wigs were made out of horsehair anyway, so it wouldn't be so strange to clip off a portion of its mane. She told herself this, anyway, and Playa's profound silence wholeheartedly agreed with her.

The main building was awfully quiet with all the ex-campers confined in one room. Really, this was the perfect time for action. Chris was busy admiring his cinematographic handiwork, Chef was attempting to handle a technological piece of equipment as amazingly state-of-the-art as Chef was _not_, and all her peers were morbidly fascinated with the final four's escapades. (Not like they were that great anyway or even deserved to be there, she was sure to point out.)

Courtney's footsteps made a pleasant echo as she turned onto yet another unfamiliar hallway. But her stride came to a jarring halt as the silence was interrupted by chatter, the jostling of various items, and the sounds of imminent electrical malfunction.

"Would you help me with this chainsaw? My upper-body strength is pretty much zero and I _really_ don't want to drop this thing on my foot."

Seconds away from rounding the corner, Courtney doubled back and pressed herself against the wall, simultaneously congratulating herself on having excellent reflexes. That voice sounded harmless enough, though, and if someone needed her help, well who was she t—?

"_Sure_," a second voice responded to the first. "Just let me drop these headphones, 10 meters of rope, three…four…_five_ candles, a box of Sharpies, this grabber-clampy thing—"

Courtney, realizing she remained unspotted and therefore wouldn't have to encounter a chainsaw, breathed a sigh of relief that she wouldn't have to explain her unexplainable wandering that led her there and turned to go. One chainsaw in 24 hours was more than enough, and these interns wouldn't be any help to her quest for a wig unless they were open to donating their own (which Courtney seriously doubted). She turned to leave.

The first voice laughed. "Okay, point taken. Duncan hijacked a lot of junk to pull off his stunt last night. Just wait until it's time to try and repair that hole he left in the floor."

But then again, at the prospect of getting details on the events of last night, Courtney paused and ventured so far as to peek back around the corner.

"I'm allergic to woodchips and violence," the second intern pouted. A walkie-talkie slid off the top of her pile and landed on the floor with a clatter, and Courtney found herself assuming obstreperosity followed this intern everywhere—not unlike a certain delinquent she knew. And this intern didn't even need a megaphone.

"And I'd rather be hammering than heavy-lifting," the other replied, eyeing the chainsaw on her back with distaste, "but we both know this has to happen before we do anything else." Courtney could identify with this girl. The immense logic of her words was rivaled only by her altitudinous height; she towered over the other intern and her pile of stuff like Mt. Everest.

Regretfully, the brunette found she was inching around the corner, hoping they would go on and say something else Duncan-related.

"Yeah, yeah, yea—hey, do you…hear something?"

Altitudinous paused and cocked her head to the side. "No… don't think s—" A piercing scream came from the direction of the ballroom, and though she didn't flinch, Altitudinous wryly changed her answer. "Yes. I definitely heard something."

The scream had been prompted by a sudden lack of light throughout the building, foreshadowed only by the faint sizzle of electrical malfunction.

Obstreperosity grunted in response, standing still in the stark blackness of the hallway so as not to lose control of her pile. "Uh, did you run into a light switch or something?" she asked (loudly). "Did _I?_ I can't really see my left elbow…"

"_No."_

"Then _what just happened?_"

There was a pause in which Altitudinous presumably considered the situation. "My guess is this is a power outage like we saw last night. The backup generators should kick in any moment. Duncan's fault, really."

Obstreperosity's angry muttering carried all the way to Courtney's end of the hallway. It sounded suspiciously like, "Stupid punk delinquent and his punk, six-pack abs… Punk."

The same thought had passed through Courtney's mind on more than one occasion, though hearing it come from someone else's mouth was somewhat unnerving. She felt she had a claim to the complex feelings brought on by Duncan's punk six-pack abs and didn't like the thought that they might be shared.

"So," Altitudinous picked up as it became evident that the lights weren't coming back to life any time soon, "you think you have a flashlight in that heap of garbage you're holding?"

"No, but I'm pretty sure there's a pack of green glowsticks under the pizza box."

The sounds of struggling and falling items commenced, but Courtney quickly grew bored of not being able to see anything and turned to go. It was then that she realized, heart heavy, that she had _no idea_ where she was or how to get back to ballroom, not even counting the fact that she was standing in what was nearly pitch-black darkness.

What was going on in the ballroom right now?, she wondered. They were supposed to be watching the latest episode, but a power outage would have put a kink in those plans. Perhaps someone was taking care of Lindsay—that was Courtney's best guess as to who had screamed, anyway. It had sounded like her, and really, who else would be afraid of a lampless ballroom? The gigantic windows let in enough light that electricity was hardly needed anyway, especially at the current sunlit hour.

"Are you sure there're glowsticks in here?" Altitudinous asked, gingerly rifling through the contents in her partner's arms. "I don't see any… glowing sticks."

The other sighed in exasperation. "Well, they aren't _lit_ already. You'll have to break them. Right now they look like _normal_ sticks."

"Because that narrows it down _so_ much," Altitudinous replied. A few more clunks and rustles later and a sound of success reached Courtney. "Would you hold this a sec?"

Courtney's expression flattened, and she wasn't even holding 35 kilos of Duncan's discarded tools.

"How am I supposed to do th—?" Obstreperosity began to ask before the foil-encased glowsticks were held up against her mouth, accompanied by a very sincere _Please?_ She muttered a few more unhappy things before biting down on the crinkling package with more ferocity than was necessary.

Altitudinous chuckled lightly to herself. "It'll only be for a second," she assured her, "just so I can get this horrible chainsaw off my back…" An obstreperous _thunk_ing sound indicated that the chainsaw had met the ground. "I'll take that back now," she sung.

Altitudinous held out her arm to retrieve the glowsticks but instead _oof_ed with strain as she found herself burdened by half of Obstreperosity's pile. "…I deserved that."

"Yes. Yes, you did," Obstreperosity said, obviously proud of herself for lightening her load.

"So how do you plan on cracking those glowsticks now?"

Courtney could have banged her head against the wall as she stood witness to their inanity, but it was a train wreck she couldn't turn away from. And there was still the lingering promise that said train wreck would lead to more information on Duncan's escapades…

"Okay," Obstreperosity began, an idea pricking along the edges of her voice. "Use your teeth to open the package, at least."

There was a violent ripping sound from Altitudinous. "Done. And to crack them…?"

_Just use your teeth again!_ Courtney wanted to scream at them. But that would have been far too easy. Her eyes were adjusting to the darkness now, and she could see the comical outlines of two figures struggling against the gravity of dozens of miscellaneous objects.

"Empty them onto the floor—we can crunch them between our feet like bugs!" Obstreperosity directed.

There was the sound of six or so glowsticks hitting the floor. They came to light slowly as the pair danced and trampled and squeezed the glowsticks between their shoes, their snapping and splintering a distorted echo of the electric malfunction that had prompted their use in the first place.

Courtney, leaning against the wall, glanced down at her feet to find that one of the green pipes had rolled its way over to her corner. Crouching down to pick it up, she couldn't help but connect the fluorescent green to the color of Duncan's Mohawk. He'd probably picked that pack of glowsticks on purpose.

With a quick glance around the corner, Courtney saw that the interns were still occupied with their stomping. And while it would have been kind to fling the wayward glowstick back to its owners, the resourceful side of her (turned _incrementally_ more rebellious by a certain boy she knew) wondered if it might not come in handy to have a glowstick on hand if these random power outages were to become routine. It couldn't hurt anything, at the very least.

She tucked her head back around the corner, grabbing both ends of the glow stick in either hand, ready to snap it and make her escape from the dark labyrinth she was trapped in. Whose stupid idea had it been anyway to go wandering about aimlessly when she had a wig to find? Oh, right: HERS.

"Hey!" Obstreperosity shouted. "Hey, you!"

The breath caught in Courtney's throat as she pressed herself flat against the wall. Crap, had they seen her? _Stealing_ from them, nonetheless! Not unless one of them had 20/20 visual acuity, and that had a 30 to 35 percent chance at best. But still, in the darkness? That was impossible! And yet…

"Come here!"

Courtney shook herself, steeling her nerves. They couldn't do anything to her. She technically wasn't doing anything wrong. Sure, she was nabbing a _harmless_ glowstick, but she could certainly blame the whole situation on Duncan—she already knew they were sympathetic to the cause. She stood up from her crouch with resignation, tucking the un-cracked glowstick into her front jacket pocket.

"You're that camera guy, right?" Obstreperosity cried joyously as a new figure emerged on the other end of the hallway, vaguely lit by the glowing at her feet. "The one Duncan almost mauled?"

"Yeah…" called a feeble male voice, which Courtney recognized as the pathetic tone of Camera-Crony, who had indeed almost been mauled by Duncan on more than one occasion. The CIT breathed a small sigh of relief and relaxed back into her hiding spot. "And my name's—"

"Help us open this door, wouldja?" Obstreperosity directed, gesturing to the wooden door they'd been struggling in front of for quite some time now.

Camera-Crony's next words came out in some combination of a whine and an argument. "But I'm on my way to the generator!" He held up a toolbox that looked to be quite heavy, if the great effort he used to carry it was any indication. "I have to fix the lights before—"

"Lights, schmights!" Obstreperosity interrupted once again, shrugging lightheartedly. "That's what glowsticks are for! This'll only take a second, and then you can be on your merry way."

Altitudinous didn't say anything, but the stare she gave him, coupled with the eerie green glow coming from the ground below her feet, must have convinced him to shut his mouth and cooperate.

"_Fine_," he huffed after a moment, kicking his feet as if he wanted to yell at the pair but didn't dare open his mouth. "Where's the key?"

"Belt loop," Altitudinous answered, craning her neck around to assure that yes, the key ring was still hanging from the back loop. And at the astonished expression on Camera-Crony's face, she barked, "Well, you don't have to be so awkward about it. At least it's not in my pocket!"

Crony chuckled uneasily, quickly snatching the ring while Obstreperosity looked on in amusement. "What do you guys need in here anyway?" he grumbled, jiggling key after key in the door's lock.

"It's the silver one," Obstreperosity offered.

"_Which_ silver one?"

"And it's not so much what we need in there," Altitudinous began, "as what we _don't_ need out here. That's the prop room."

"And _these_," Obstreperosity continued, looking at the miscellaneous items in her hands, "are all props Duncan somehow got a hold of. Still can't quite figure out why he picked these from all the show props we have in there..."

_The prop room..._ Courtney mused, peering around the corner again, more carefully this time, as Camera-Crony went through wrong key after wrong key. _The... PROP room!_ _Which stored all the props used in the show!_ Courtney felt the weight of her deal with Heather nearly evaporate. If they kept a chainsaw and glowsticks and grabber clamper thingies in there, which she'd never even seen _used_ on the show, the odds of them have wigs in there, which she definitely remembered seeing at least once, were in her favor! Maybe no one's head was getting shaved after all.

A key clicked in the lock.

"Finally! What took you so long?"

"_This key isn't even silver!"_

"IS SO!"

"_You're crazy!"_

"YOU'RE COLORBLIND!"

"All right," Altitudinous interrupted, "Thank you, uh, guy. You're dismissed."

"My name is—"

"_Dismissed. GO."_

Courtney had to admire the girl's no nonsense attitude.

Camera-Crony slunk off with his toolbox, muttering about women and being unappreciated, as Altitudinous and Obstreperosity stumbled into the prop room with their piles of miscellanea and back out of it empty-handed, leaving the neon green glowsticks to illuminate the hallway when they were finished.

Courtney dashed out from her hiding spot the moment Altitudinous's ponytail disappeared around the corner, quickly swiping one of the already lit glowsticks from the floor for a light source. But despite her excellent state of fitness (from her daily Pilates routine and running from Chris's demonic imagination for six weeks), the weighted door clicked shut in her face just before she could catch it.

Literally face to face with the solution to her problem and no way to reach it, Courtney kicked the base of the (possibly _titanium-_laced) door in frustration. She tried knocking it down like a policeman, tried grabbing a bobby pin from her hair and picking the lock. She even tried weakening the hinges in hopes that the door might fall in—all to no avail.

She _had_ to find a way to get herself into that prop room. If Duncan could do it, she could too, right?

Courtney glared at the door, an unattractive idea slowly forming in her head. If Duncan had done it once...

(The CIT kicked at the door a final time, cursing.)

...he could probably do it again.

* * *

They hadn't shown it, Duncan thought in amazement as the lights flickered back on and the credits rolled. _They hadn't shown it._

It was taking all of Duncan's willpower not to jump up and dance. The world didn't know the reason behind his stint in juvy. In a parallel universe, the residents of Playa were responding to his confession with shock and horror, but in this one, they were merely clearing their tables and talking about what a badass he was. Playa didn't know, and Courtney _definitely_ didn't know because he'd locked her out half an hour earlier. Speaking of…

"So Geoff," Duncan started, leaning over to his friend beside him, "on a scale of one to lethal, how mad do you think Courtney is that I locked her out?"

"Hard to say, bro," Geoff replied, giving him a sympathetic shrug. "Why don't you ask her?"

Duncan whirled around in time to see Bridgette unwedging a chair from its place in front of the door, allowing in a surprisingly composed-looking Courtney, and leading her back to the table. Unfortunately, Duncan couldn't gauge her degree of rage because she was frantically whispering to Bridgette—probably getting her opinion on his death sentence.

"Owen and Mr. Coconut are looking like safer company right about now," Duncan muttered, mentally bracing himself for the onslaught as the devil in a cardigan walked over.

"See you in hell, bro," Geoff responded, offering an emboldening fist-pound under the table.

"_SO_," Courtney said cheerily, resuming her place at the table, "how was the episode?"

Duncan furrowed his eyebrows. It was...a normal question. Who was she asking? She was _smiling_. Shouldn't she be yelling at him right now?

"Awesome!" Geoff replied, throwing his hands up in the air and ignoring Duncan's looks of uncertainty. "Duncan and Gwen and Heather and Owen got stranded on a desert island, and Owen went totally bonkers and started talking to a coconut!" Geoff had to take a moment to stifle his laughter. "It was _hilarious_! Too bad you missed it, Courtney."

"Yes," Courtney replied, her mouth pulling into a small smile. She held Duncan's gaze. "Too bad I missed it."

"It wasn't that great," Duncan announced, dismissing the whole idea with a role of his eyes (and a subtle yet violent kick to his oblivious friend's shin.) "I was doing you a favor."

Courtney looked unimpressed. "A favor."

"Yup," he said, regaining his suave demeanor. "It was really just 22 minutes of Owen being hungry, Gwen and Heather being bitches, and me being handsome. And let's face it," he joked, giving her his _Whaddaya say we go back to my place?_ look. "You can see that anytime."

"Uh-_huh_," she drawled back, unconvinced. She then proceeded to beat to death the butterflies that had welled up in her stomach. Adopting the most civil tone she could muster, she proposed, "But, speaking of favors, there's something I'd like to ask you."

"Your room or mine?" Duncan inquired.

Her face twitched. "No."

"With or without a—?

"_Don't push me."_

"Hypocrite!"

"Hypocrite?" Courtney scoffed, her composure fracturing. "How does that make me a hypocrite?"

"You push people all the time."

"I do not!"

"Sure you do," Duncan continued. "You're _all_ about—"

"DO YOU WANT TO HELP ME BREAK INTO THE PROP ROOM OR NOT?" she screeched. And then, embarrassed by her volume, she hastily glanced around, only to find that she and Duncan were the only two left in the room. Had they really been talking that long? Or perhaps they'd just scared everyone else away…?

She turned back to Duncan to find him staring at her, an expression of giddy disbelief written on his features.

"…Princess!" he breathed, scooting his chair closer to her own. "Did you just ask me to help you break a rule?"

Courtney crossed her arms but stayed resolutely rooted to the spot. "Perhaps."

"Are you sure you could live with the guilt that comes with not being perfect?" he prodded, a smirk spreading across his face.

"If you can remotely function with everything in _your_ record, I'm sure I'll find a way," she replied sweetly, though her gaze was stiff.

Duncan pushed back from the table and kicked his feet up on the crisp tablecloth. "And remind me _why_ you want to get into the prop room again?"

"I didn't tell you in the first place."

"And tell me _why_ you want to get into the prop room again?" he amended.

Courtney stood up, pushed in her chair, and dusted some invisible crumbs off her blouse as she considered her reply. "Look, Duncan. I would like this to operate on a need-to-know basis. The door is locked, I need something that is in there, and you're the only person I know who's as good at getting into tricky situations as he is at getting out of them."

Duncan's chest puffed with pride at her last assertion. His mind, however, latched onto something else. "You need something out of the prop room?"

Courtney made a face. "Why _else_ would I need to get into the prop room?"

He chuckled. "_Well_ if you were looking for somewhere private to—"

"_Are you in or not?"_ she snapped. She waited, unbreathing, as he took his feet off the table, stood, and considered the proposition.

A Frisbee thunked against one of the tall glass doors and was retrieved by Tyler half a minute later.

Duncan cleared his throat, pulling Courtney's attention back immediately. And then, walking over to the very same door, he declared, "I'll have to get back to you on that, Darling."

"Ugh, DUNCAN!" she shouted, palms balling into fists of their own accord.

"What?" the boy with the Mohawk asked innocently.

Courtney looked like she was in pain when she asked, rather fiercely, "Why can't you just say _yes_?"

"Oh, Princess." Duncan shook his head in faux disapproval. "You _never_ make a deal without considering all your options."

Then he pulled open the door, tipped his imaginary hat in her direction, and slipped out into the sunlight, trying to figure out exactly what it was he had to lose.

* * *

Please, Duncan, I think we all know what the correct answer is.

**From strayphoenix**: So we're totally excited about this story again! It took me a long time to get over the disaster that was TDWT and, honestly, I haven't given TDROTI a chance yet, so Rina and I are happy living in our timeless little world of Playa de Losers shenanigans. LITERALLY in it. Those two interns sounding more familiar now? ;)

Summer means we work faster, so let's see if we can get another chapter or two out while we're in the surf and turf season. You know making two deals in the same day can't be the best decision Courtney's ever made...

Stay tuned for more summer, illegal shenanigans!

**From Contemperina: **Yeah, Easter Egg surprise in May! I hope it isn't totally lame that we wrote ourselves into our own story. At least we serve a functional purpose as characters, right?... And we've left you to guess which intern is which! I'm sure how obvious or not obvious that actually is.

We will be forever in love with Duncan, Courtney, and their tomfoolery, and I can't wait to give you all something more to read! You've been so patient with us, and we're really working to get you some material that's worthwhile to supplement your summer.

Until next time!

* * *

A million thanks to our many faithful readers, reviewers, and supporters in general, who somehow manage to remember what's going on in this story despite the absurdly long gaps between each installment.

Thanks for reading! Please review (:


	22. Never sink too low

**Rule 22: Never sink too low **

It's a bird! It's a plane! It's an update!

If you'll recall, when we left Courtney, she'd asked Duncan to help her break into a prop room, which she found following a pair of interns during the episode viewing.

* * *

Duncan considered himself a master of negotiation. He'd always had good instincts when it came to making deals, and they'd been vastly improved by his stint in juvy, a place where your ability to choose the best option—and fast—was all that stood between you and the last gross slopful of cafeteria macaroni (or, in certain other cases, life and death. But thinking about it in those terms made Duncan feel weirder than he'd admit.) As he wandered Playa, he thought back to all the situations he'd gotten out of with nothing more than a couple of well-placed words. Always the right word at the right time.

Of course, he'd also faced many _right words, wrong time _situations, which came with their own set of problems, the most recent being a brunette who wanted his help breaking into the resort's prop room. In that case, unfortunately, Duncan's cut-throat bargaining instincts had become suddenly dormant.

And worse than that, to cover it he'd said probably the _worst _possible thing he could have. There Courtney was, practically begging for his help, and he said he had to "consider all his options"? What options? He could help her or not help her, but there wasn't really a middle ground, although there _definitely _was a better way he could have said it. It was a _wrong words, right time _situation if he'd even seen one—which he wasn't sure he had. He usually had a knack for saying the right thing when handed the PERFECT opportunity to further his agenda.

Of course, this didn't get him any closer to a decision. But, he thought as he mounted a flight of stairs, there was a way to work around the blanks he kept pulling. His old standby!

_Helping Courtney Break Into the Prop Room—Pros and Cons_

Pro: He was getting bored, and it would give him something easy to do.

Another: It involved illegal activity, which was always a favorite.

Con: It wouldn't be as fun now that he'd already done it once.

An important pro: Courtney would be there this time around.

Pro: He could impress Courtney.

But a just-as-important con: She wouldn't tell him what it was she wanted out of the room. And he _hated _going into a mission blind. What if it was a setup?

Con: It was _Courtney _he was thinking about. Of course it was a setup.

Question: Did he care?

Answer: No.

Pro: She needed his help to break rules! At _night_. _Alone_. Just the two of them.

Pro: Plus, he loved the way her eyes lit up when she was breaking rules…

Duncan grinned goofily to himself.

* * *

Harold had been having a tough few days.

The trouble hadn't really started until Duncan's appearance. Yes, Harold's initial arrival to the resort hadn't been the greatest, what with Courtney forcing him into hiding with her stalking and relentless threats (which, as it turned out, weren't the bluffs he'd originally assumed they were. Had he known she were so capable, he would have been prepared and _never _decorated with a lamppost and marooned on a palm tree. You live, you learn.)

But after she'd gotten her vengeance, Harold quickly reintroduced himself to life on Playa—though not so quickly as to attract Courtney's attention and subsequent wrath once more. It was a precise science, and he'd progressed from rookie to master in the span of a week, purely out of necessity.

And so, life had been simple. Harold's days were filled with nothing but sleeping, eating, and working to maintain his plethora of skills, each day distinguishable from the last by the steady progress of self-improvement. And that was fine by him! It was the life he'd signed up for when he set out to become proficient in… well, everything.

If it weren't for Duncan, he might have taught himself to read upside-down by now.

Instead, in the last couple of days, he'd been coerced into freezing a swimming pool (though that was actually something he could check off his bucket list), gaining the trust of his coercer in the process and then losing it ten times as quickly not a day later. He'd been called Dorkasaurus, Dorkahontas, Dorkbucket, Dorkwad, and a variety of other names starting with dork (Duncan wasn't outstandingly creative in that regard) but more shamefully, he'd answered to at least half of those kinder insults. And worse, ever since last night, when Heather dropped her truth-bomb—the only kind of bomb Harold didn't find inherently interesting—Harold had again been relegated to ducking around chairs and behind potted plants. That is, until he'd run for cover behind the potted plant Ezekiel was presently camped out behind and had been told, in no uncertain terms, to "find yoor oo-wn hiding spoot, bro, eh?"

The encounter had forced him to get creative. But even through all the hiding, Harold had managed to surface a few, carefully-estimated times when Duncan was distracted by problems greater than his desire for revenge. Funny, since the girl he was supposedly avenging was the one who usually kept him from getting around to it...

Even so, Harold made it a point not to flaunt his livelihood in front of the delinquent on a regular basis, doubly so after the last night's reveal. It was actually a great complement to his ninja skills to think that Duncan hadn't found him yet, he thought from where he sat in the resort pool.

Well, _under_ the pool. Harold was presently sitting at the bottom of the five meter deep end; he'd borrowed the straw contraption Leshawna used for hide-and-seek and improved upon it enough so that he could stay down there for _about _as long as he wanted, provided the water pressure didn't become too intense. Duncan had lost the hide-and-seek episode, and Harold would have thought a guy as street-smart as he was might have learned his lesson and checked under the water for the Dorknozzle-the nerd, not his straw contraption (patent pending)-whom he blamed for his not-girlfriend's untimely exit. Or maybe Duncan simply wasn't looking that hard, which might hopefully translate to a lack of interest in Harold's demise.

It was too bad that hoping didn't make it any likelier. Last night, Harold had gotten himself the number one slot on Duncan's hit-list, and he was pretty sure nothing short of a miracle of the ground-swallowing variety would get him off. His stomach growled (a funny feeling when submerged in water, he noted), and Harold quickly weighed the degree of his hunger against the risk of suffering at Duncan's hands if he were caught surfacing.

While Harold couldn't make himself sorry for snatching his own little piece of revenge against his tormentor (it was too bad about Courtney, but she wasn't such a model human being either), he regretted not being a little smarter about it. It was rookie criminal behavior: leaving stupid clues behind because you wanted credit for the crime. Exacting illegal revenge in a taped Confessional was pretty bad, though, he had to admit.

Harold's stomach growled again, more insistently, and he wished once more that he had found a way to maintain Chef's potato salad underwater for more than 20 minutes at a time.

Taking a risky bet that Duncan wasn't outside based on the lack of anguished wails and angry shouting, Harold speedily extricated himself from the contraption he used to weigh himself down in the water and resurfaced. Bobbing around as his eyes became accustomed to unfiltered sunlight, he scanned for either Duncan or Courtney and happily noted that neither was to be seen.

"Yesssssss," he hissed, throwing himself out of the pool, then jogging over to the buffet table and loading up on salads and sandwiches just as quickly.

"Harold, dude!" Trent called from where he reclined in a chair. "Nice to see you out and about again!"

Harold flinched at his name being called, but Trent meant him no harm. In fact, he was one of the red-head's biggest allies; he'd routinely slipped him lunchmeat back when Courtney was on a rampage, a fact Harold never stopped appreciating.

"I know, right?" Harold responded, turning his head sideways and knocking out what seemed like a liter of pool water. And then, thinking it was worth a shot, he asked, "You don't know where Duncan is, do you?"

"Not around here, that's for sure," Trent said, laughing at Harold's audible sigh of relief. "He was by the buffet earlier, but I guess it's been a while now." Trent scratched his head, wincing in pain when he accidentally clawed at his skull indentation bruise, and took a cursory glance around the area. "I saw him head upstairs. I bet he went back to his room."

"_Sweet_." Harold offered Trent his thanks before stuffing his mouth too full of barbeque chips to talk any further. Flashing him a thumbs up, he trotted (albeit cautiously) into Playa's main building, pulling on his t-shirt as he went.

The Total Drama Island finale was in just two more days and there were still a good many places Harold wanted to revisit before they all got kicked out of the resort and this was probably his best Duncan-free opportunity to dart into some off-the-chart space without being detected. The gym was never a bad choice. There were countless skills that could be improved there, and Harold had just been thinking that his jump roping was getting kind of rusty. But then again, he also enjoyed nabbing chemical samples out of the cleaning supply closet and observing their reactions with one another. And then _again_, the arcade was still up for grabs. Big Buck Hunterwas a personal favorite of his, and he hadn't had a chance to visit it since he'd gone in there and finished off Duncan's game—maybe not his wisest choice, but leaving a note to reserve an arcade game was nothing short of a gaming misdemeanor, and Duncan would never have to know it was he, Harold, who had righted his wrong.

"Big Bucks… prepare to die," Harold muttered darkly, sprinting in the direction of the arcade.

* * *

Duncan's pro/con list had grown way too lopsided for there to be any further debate, but his gut was still flip-flopping over the decision. _What's wrong here?_, he wondered, pushing through a set of double doors at random and flopping down in the center of an unoccupied room. Some piece of the puzzle was missing, some bit of information that he'd pushed from his mind to make room for more important things that didn't seem so important now.

As much as he wanted to convince himself he didn't care why Courtney wanted to break into the prop room (so long as she wanted to do it with him), curiosity was taking over. And severely undermining the usefulness of his pro/con list.

But that wasn't _entirely _it. He could live with not knowing her reasons—or rather, he could live with having to carefully tease them out of her when her guard was down—but something else was bugging him about the arrangement. Something a little deeper than the annoyance of not knowing. Unfolding his arms, he threw them up above his head and let them rest there on the floor.

And then he realized: guilt. The missing variable in his own equation, the reason all his reasoning wouldn't stick.

The final pro: He owed Courtney for getting her kicked off the island prematurely. It was a con on anyone else's list, butprobably the best argument for why he needed to help her out now.

And it had been Harold's doing. Of all the potential two-faced scumbags he'd shared that island with for eight weeks (Chris sure knew how to pick em), it had been _Harold_. Over the past 24 hours, Duncan had been so busy wheedling his way into the Princess's favor that pummeling the ginger had completely slipped his mind. But now? He was in for it, bigtime.

Sure, Duncan had messed with Harold before. As he understood it, that was what had driven the nerd to go after Courtney in the first place, for "revenge" (though it was a pathetic, gutless way to go about it). But in comparison to what was coming, _that _had all been harmless fun.

Besides, it had all been for his own good, anyway. Duncan was like the Robin Hood of pranking. Bragging about your beatboxing too often? Consider yourself humiliated. Leaving your underwear all over the place? Consider yourself hot-sauced. Harold couldn't pull off cocky asshole and he couldn't pull off slob, and messages didn't get through to him unless they were made painfully, prank-tastically obvious.

But seriously, when had Harold decided to get underhanded and start breaking rules himself?

Duncan gritted his teeth, mentally switching into high gear. There was no question now: he had to help Courtney break into the prop room. He owed it to her—he'd owed it to her for far too long already. So he would do her one better. It was about to get real so damn fast, Harold had _no idea_.

Sir Nerds-A-Lot thought he was at the bottom of the high school hierarchy—and he was. But what he hadn't yet learned was that he was at the bottom of the rule-breaking food chain too. Being a small fish in a big pond was one thing. It was something else entirely when you were a nurse shark in a school of Great Whites.

Duncan's hands curled into fists. Some things could only be taught the hard way.

* * *

Today was the day he beat his high score—Harold could feel it. The day was young, he had enough food on his plate to last him till dinner easily, and like Trent said, Duncan was probably holed up in his room pining for Courtney or something. Still, as he came up on the double doors to the arcade, he stood on tiptoe to peer through the sliver of a window, checking for any familiar figures.

"All clear?" he asked himself aloud, pushing open the door with the hand that wasn't holding his plate. "All cl—"

But he froze in the doorway, for laying in front of him, flat on the ground in what most people would call Starfish Position, was literally the only person he was avoiding.

"I was hoping I'd run into you today, Dorkenstein." Duncan had been lying flat on the ground, unviewable from the tiny window, but he wasn't anymore. In fact, he'd gone from quiet pondering to open hostility (with only a brief flicker of surprise in between) way faster than Harold had originally thought possible of anyone.

"You know what I was just thinking about?" Duncan asked, stalking over to the petrified nerd and pushing him out of the way to close the door behind him.

"You were probably wondering where Courtney is," Harold wheezed, his pulse ten times faster than what was probably safe and his feet exactly zero percent responsive.

Duncan slammed his fist into the now shut door just over Harold's shoulder. The nerd jumped in place, since he literally had nowhere else to go, and anxiously wondered if punching the wall qualified as Duncan exhibiting self-control. Because if it did...

The punk let out a cruel sound somewhere between a laugh and a snarl. "I was _thinking_ about people who break rules. And I realized that you're one of those people now." Duncan looked Harold up and down and nodded to himself. "You put up such a _fight _over freezing that pool, but it's all an act, isn't it?"

Harold gulped and shook his head, though he was subtly trying to case the room for possible modes of escape.

"Right. Of _course _it isn't an act, because you're Harold the kung fu champ and honor is your middle name." Duncan's voice was dropping deeper, wavering disturbingly close to the growl that meant trouble: not being pranked or taught a small lesson—that Harold could deal with—but something so truly dangerous that it might not yield such an immediate recovery. Something that might send a perpetrator to juvy and a victim to a hospital...or worse.

"Well guess what, Harold," Duncan spat, catching his prey by the collar and yanking him closer. "You're in over your head. And you know who's at the top of your new food chain?" He shoved him back up against the door so the pair was standing nose to nose. "_Me_. I'm the real deal. People like me go to juvy for the rules we break and that's _fine_. Next down are the people who break rules for important reasons, then stupid reasons, and then just for fun. And below them are the underhanded schemers who cheat on tests because they want A's instead of B's, and lie to their parents about their lives because they still care what they think.

"And _then_, under all of those rule-breakers, are people. Like. _You_," he growled, emphasizing every word. "Gutless snakes who cut through loopholes because you can't get through life on your own and won't admit it. You think you're so goddamn honorable, holding doors and saying 'please'. But you know what? You're worse than me! You struck the lowest blow you could come up with, and then you pussed outbecause you couldn't face the consequences! You broke rules because you couldn't beat _Courtney _and you couldn't _beat me_!"

In a true testament to his intelligent nature, all Harold could focus on, even with Duncan yelling in his face, was all the logical fallacies in this argument. But, actually, Harold thought frantically, did a method of escape exist in breaking down Duncan's argument? After all, the only thing Duncan ever responded to was being told he was wrong—_firmly_. With conviction! Courtney, Chef, the police. If Harold could just mimic those authority figures...

"You claim breaking rules and getting sent to juvy puts you at the top of the food chain," he started, squaring his shoulders. "But what you don't seem to realize is that you fall into several of your other categories as well. You break rules for fun all the time, for _no _good reason."

"_Excuse _me?" Duncan snarled, further infuriated that his prey was talking back to him. And while Harold realized that Duncan was reaching his boiling point, he felt certain he was onto something with this authority thing. Duncan wouldn't make a move so long as Harold stayed confident. Confidence was key with Duncan.

"And what about breaking rules to maintain appearances?" Harold asked. "Does that not sound like _someone _you know?" Courtney fit that definition to a T! From what the redhead knew of her, the description fit so closely that he wouldn't even bother elaborating.

"And as for me being quote-unquote 'lower' than _you_," Harold continued, fighting to keep his own emotions out of his counterargument, "that simply isn't true. I had _reasons _for what I did."

Duncan growled, so Harold inhaled quickly and continued. "You just can't comprehend them! You rank yourself at the top of your mentally-organized pyramid of misdoing, which means you don't know what it's like at the bottom of _any_ pyramid. You don't know what it's like to be bullied day after day for no _reason_. To be going about your normal business only to get yanked away and thrown into a _lake_. To win the talent show for your team and see it undermined a day later by _you_, a guy who just happens to have the whole camp under his thumb!" Harold pulled off his glasses to look Duncan in the face, as authoritatively as possible. (Plus, he was only farsighted and Duncan was so close, it was making him practically cross-eyed.) "You didn't deserve that kind of power, Duncan! And if Courtney had to turn into some collateral damage to prove it to you, then so be—!"

Duncan's fist slammed into Harold's face.

"_Collateral damage?!_" Duncan roared, hands curled into fists and expression livid. "Is _that_ what she was to you, you _little_—!"

Harold, stunned and clutching at his throbbing face, barely had time to look up from the floor when Duncan's shoe connected hard with his hip. Harold was suddenly, acutely aware of what it meant that Duncan had been sent to _juvy._ Beyond all his pranks and petty crimes, the punk had actually done something so _terrible_, he'd been forcibly removed from society. People didn't go to juvy for small infractions. They went for armed robbery and assault. For arson. Or murder.

Harold thought he might have wet his pants right then if he hadn't already relieved his bladder in the pool.

"You have a problem with me? FINE!" Duncan yelled. "You _grow a pair_ and take it out on ME! _SHE DIDN'T DESERVE THAT_!"

Harold could only clutch at his face and struggle feebly as Duncan reached down and yanked him sharply to an upright position. His feet weren't holding him though—he stood only by the power of Duncan's fury, and his grip.

"And you want to know what that gets you now?!" he snarled, shaking Harold violently. "Two choices, scum. One, you can act like a sneaky bastard and run away now. But when I find you—" Duncan's tourniquet grip tightened further as he glared right into Harold's face, implying that Harold _would_ be found eventually, "—you're _done_. Or option two." Duncan released Harold and spoke over him as the collapsed back into a heap on the ground. "If you man up and own up to everything now, maybe you'll gain enough of my respect to keep me from causing you any permanent damage."

The delinquent took a step back, towering. "Up to you. I'm good either way."

Harold found himself blinking rapidly, trying to make sense of the options he'd been given. Was this a fight or flight situation? Because his well-trained instincts weren't pointing him in either direction. Useless senses.

Harold knew he couldn't win a fight against Duncan now—his karate (not kung fu, thank you very much, though he was working on that too) was out of practice from sitting around the resort all week, and his ninja stars, nunchucks, etc. were far away in his room, and _GOSH _did his face and hip hurt. But flight? Even if it took Duncan the rest of his time on the resort to figure out that Harold was sitting comfortably in the deep end of the pool, it was just prolonging what was sure to be a debilitating encounter.

No, this wasn't a question of fight or flight. This was a question of his honor, and while he might have made an error of judgment before, Harold would _never _let anyone beat his honor out of him.

So he stood, albeit shakily. But when he steeled his nerves to look up at Duncan, he was thrown off to find that he wasn't quite looking at the same careless guy who had made his life difficult so many times before, or the bully who had just put a dent in his face. There was some unnerving difference around Duncan's eyes which, against all Harold's hopes, didn't give him any satisfaction to see there.

Was it… loss?

That couldn't be right. There was no _way_separating from Courtney after just a few weeks had been that hard. And yet, as far as Harold had observed, he was spending almost every second of his day either near her or looking for her. And that thing in his eyes…

It was pain, no way around it—Harold had seen it in the mirror, in his own reflection. He was suffering from it now! His ears were ringing, his head pounding, his vision undeniably fuzzy (or was that because his glasses were on the floor?). But Harold was trying to mask the extent of his pain with confidence. He realized Duncan was very possibly doing the same with his anger. And with this odd realization came another, less welcome than the last. Maybe his bully had a point. What if Harold _was _low?

So he stood up tall as he could and stuck his chest out. Imagining himself as one of the samurais he so admired, he stepped around his long-since dropped buffet plate to meet Duncan where he stood and took a deep breath.

"I arranged the votes against Courtney to hurt you as you had hurt me," he began, summoning as much nobility as he could muster. "And I am not proud of my actions, nor my crime against Courtney. But I do not regret trying to hurt you, because you were deserving of it. I only fear I wounded you more deeply than I had originally planned."

Duncan was uncharacteristically quiet then. His glare was hard, but not hard enough to hide his mind turning over Harold's words.

_You couldn't beat Courtney and you couldn't beat me, _Harold repeated Duncan's words in his head as he waited for the bully's response. Duncan was talking like he held her in as high a regard as he held himself (surprising, since Harold had been lead to believe Duncan existed in a social tier all his own). He was talking like they were comparable competitors. Like he genuinely _cared _that Harold had tried and failed to beat her. And after what seemed like much too long, it dawned on him.

"I didn't realize how much you liked her," Harold admitted quietly.

Duncan seemed to carefully consider his reply. "That was your mistake, then, wasn't it?"

As far as Harold was concerned, that question said more than any answer. There was no rebuttal, no denial, no claim that Courtney was hot and he simply wanted to get her into bed. He liked her. Genuinely. It was a weird thing to realize about the boy who was about to beat you into a trash compactor cube.

Harold bent down to pocket his glasses, made a small bow, and held his arms out wide in submission. He hoped all the angels in the afterlife looked like Leshawna.

* * *

We don't know whether to be totally smitten or concerned for Harold's life.

**From strayphoenix**: So at the rate we're going, we just realized we'll have covered a day of TDI time in a year of posting time xD. Sorry as always for the delay. We hate having to make you guys wait but we hate more giving you half-assed chapters that aren't worth the time you spent wishing for that story alert email. I hope karma deems it a fair trade.

This is probably our heaviest chapter in the story so far. But that's okay! Because we could all use a bit of heavy lifting exercise for our Duncney souls.

As we remind you every time, Rina and I are nowhere near through with this so bear with us, have patience, feel free to change that dial but always come back to Playa de Losers.

**From Contemperina**: Hello again, everyone! I hope this wasn't too much of a cliffhanger for you, because history would indicate that it will be hanging for a good while... Sorry, guys. But stray and I worked very hard making sure this chapter was chock full of action and heart and Duncan and Duncan liking Courtney and deep thoughts and violence and OH MY GOD WILL HAROLD BE OKAY?! It's hard to say. Duncan just cares about Courtney _so much. _I would be swooning if we hadn't just put Harold in such total and complete danger.

Just kidding. I'm swooning anyway.

Lots of love from this side of the cyberworld - Rina.

* * *

Thanks again to all of our readers, who somehow put up with us. And as always:

Thanks for reading! Please review (:


	23. Never trust the power

**Rule 23: Never trust the power**

**Happy New Year, fans of drama! We're kicking it off with an update! [Rina blows a noisemaker] [stray attempts to set off a firework and nearly kills everyone]**

**If you'll recall, when we left Courtney, she was the subject of Duncan and Harold's intense arcade room confrontation. And now, we learn her fate...**

* * *

Courtney stared at the note again, reading it once more to be sure. Then to its messenger. Then to the note again.

It was a testament to the strangeness of her life at present that a scribbled napkin-note, attached to the forehead of a former teammate who was twisted like a pretzel on her doorstep wasn't even the oddest thing she had opened up her door to find.

"What does he mean '_meet me where you almost died_'?" she complained to herself. "He's nearly killed me in several places!"

For a guy who had his arms and legs twisted comically, impossibly, _painfully_ over his head and around his throat, Harold still seemed able to speak all right—though still with his signature wheeze. "The pool isn't frozen anymore, so he obviouslydoesn't mean there. Unless he wanted to drown you again or something."

Courtney glanced at him over the top of the chicken scratched napkin note. "Did he tell you anything else?" she asked. How Harold wound up in his present state didn't seem to be as pressing a question for her.

Harold attempted to shrug, lost his already precarious balance, and tipped over onto his side. "Ouch! _Gosh_." He pushed his head against the carpet to adjust his glasses. "Duncan didn't tell me anything."

For a second, Courtney expected Harold to follow that up with a comment about not shooting the messenger. But then again, when she took into account the intricate tangles of his joints and his inability to even maintain a semi-upright position, it could only lead to one safe assumption: Harold as a messenger had already been pretty much… well, shot.

She turned the napkin note over. There was a ketchup stain on the back.

_"'Meet me where you almost died when Chef calls lights out',_" she read again, wrinkling her nose.

She could figure this out, she told herself. She was a politician after all, and this was hardly a James Bond villain's evil masterminded plan. Sure, she'd have to get in Duncan's head, but this was a 24-piece children's puzzle at best.

Shutting her door with a frustrated grumble, Courtney turned back into her room to try to piece together her clue in relative quiet. (There was a rather noisy Frisbee game still going out on the pool deck, but there was no avoiding that. How was it fair that Playa had a fully-equipped arcade but no library?)

She put the napkin out under her desk lamp which—after flickering once like the rest of the electronics connected to Playa's now-unreliable power supply—illuminated the writing. She pulled out a piece of paper and a pencil from her desk and grudgingly made a short list that would only ever have been necessary on an island like Playa.

Okay, so she had almost died exactly three times (not counting a few near heart attacks for which her death would have just been an unfortunate side effect). It couldn't have been the pool, as Harold had so stated, because it was no longer frozen.

Below 'The pool' she had listed 'The dock' (by which she really meant 'The Heather'), but she felt that was a stretch. She'd been on the fence with Heather for the entirety of their scuffle, but never had she been in danger of actually being _killed_. Though Duncan might have been convinced otherwise, as tightly as he'd been restraining her.

So of course, process of elimination left her at the roof. It really did seem like the most obvious choice. That surely would have caused the most damage had things not turned out in her favor.

"Not to mention Duncan would _love _the opportunity to gloat more about 'saving' me," she mused, touching the pencil eraser to her lips for a second before remembering that any number of people had handled it before her, and it would probably give her mouth sores.

Courtney looked over her list and compared it with the napkin note. There were no cameras on the roof—they'd already confirmed that. It was perfect! They'd start at the top and work their way down to the lower levels that contained the prop room. Duncan would probably relish the chance to outsmart Chef's night security system just for the hell of it.

Courtney rolled her eyes and circled 'The Roof' in a big, sweeping circle before pocketing the note in her cardigan, where it fit snugly beside her pilfered glow stick.

With that decided, Courtney didn't have much else left to occupy her thoughts. She'd been waiting in her room for Duncan's answer anxiously (though she'd never admit it), but now that she'd discovered it (and Harold. How long had he been lying out there, anyway?) she was left feeling restless. Bridgette wouldn't be coming by for another hour or so at least, to pick her up so they could resume their recently-interrupted gym routine. How could Courtney be expected to kill over an hour of monotony _without a library?_

She instead reread the only thing available to her, Duncan's answer, and was soon sidetracked by an alarming thought. _Was _it even an answer? It occurred to her that Duncan hadn't explicitly said he was helping at all. What if he was leading her to the place where she'd 'almost died' in an attempt to kill her again? Or kill himself! Or make a move on her under the guise of showing her something 'cool' but ultimately useless—she certainly didn't want that. Without a definitive 'yes', Courtney realized, she could be walking into any manner of Duncan-themed schemes under the pretense of an agreement Duncan had never explicitly agreed to.

Courtney jerked the door of her room open to find that, as she'd expected, Harold was exactly where she'd left him, though in an attempt to right himself he'd somehow rocked himself onto the top half of his face.

She ignored this. "How can I know that Duncan isn't just exploiting a loophole?" she demanded, glaring at the tangled mess of nerd on her doorstep. "Did he say _anything _else to you?"

Harold, who'd been trying to inch his way into an upright position using only his elbow, his chin, and one big toe, stopped to look at her nervously. Mistaking her frustration for wrath (though to be fair, with Courtney the two terms were hardly ever exclusive of each other), he swallowed and scrambled for a fragment of an answer. "Well, he, uh... he said he really thinks a lot of you?"

Courtney stared at him. "What?"

Harold deftly noted he'd said something incorrect and backtracked. "Well, he, uh, didn't actually _say_ that. I guess it was like, _implied_. I'm pretty good at picking up on that stuff you know. He was talking about how it bothered him that I voted you off and I realized he was actually talking about how great you were and how—"

Not having any clue as to where this was coming from and not terribly excited to hear more, Courtney yanked the note out from her pocket and held it up, still folded, in Harold's face.

"I want to know about this!" She shook the note for emphasis, hoping she looked in better control of her emotions than she felt. "Did Duncan say anything to you about his intention behind THIS?"

"Oh," Harold wheezed, promptly shutting up. He tried to crane his neck around to squint at the napkin but had little success. "...What's that?"

Courtney was a second away from explaining when she decided such a lengthy and unnecessary story would be lost on Harold anyway. "Nevermind!" she said curtly, pushing Duncan's note back into her pocket before going back inside her room and pushing the door closed behind her.

Once more relegated to waiting for Bridgette, she plopped down on her bed and mentally reviewed the terms of her agreement with Heather. She was, in fact, fully engrossed in the memory of their encounter when Harold spoke up, his voice muffled through the door. "Duncan _did _say all those other things, you know, about you being great and all."

Courtney stood and walked to the door, cracking it open again. Harold had progressed exactly three centimeters to the left and nothing more. He seemed to have given up on mobility for the time being.

"No, he didn't," she found herself saying almost automatically.

"He did too!"

Courtney tried again in an attempt to sound more convincing. "You must be thinking of the _other _punk-ass, Mohawked criminal on this island."

Harold sighed. This wasn't a conversation he particularly wanted to be having, but it was a highly strategic move inspired by his run-in with Duncan. By some force of luck or fate or fortune, Harold had pulled some honesty out of the serial liar, and it _might_ just have saved his life. So, if he got a confession out of Courtney as well, it would, plausibly, ease their tensions and make it all the less likely that he would get caught in any more of the Duncan/Courtney wars that were sure to follow. "He said everything _almost _the way I said he did. Sue me for paraphrasing, GOSH."

Courtney, regretfully curious, opened the door a bit wider anyway. "Even if Duncan wouldvocally admit to something so..._apocryphal_," she settled on after passing up both 'questionable' and 'untrue' as word choices, "why would he share it with _you?_"

Harold did his feeble half shrug again, and fortunately kept from falling any further into the ground. "The thought process of the criminal psyche is more advanced than my psychological studies have progressed," he admitted. "I guess he didn't think anyone would ever believe me. Probably never expected me to be talking to you, either."

It was one thing to get information regarding Duncan's affections from Bridgette, Courtney thought—she was a tertiary source, putting a bunch of second-hand information together into one account. It had a much higher probability of being faulty or inaccurate because it had jumped through so many hoops on its way to the ears of a blue-hoodied surfer girl. It was another thing entirely to receive information (which just so happened to support the _other _information) from a Harold pretzel lying at her feet. He was a secondary source, and the only thing more accurate than that was the source itself...

The lights flickered again. She changed the topic. "How are you even talking normally in that tangle?"

"I lost feeling in everything like an hour ago."

An awkward silence fell between them. Courtney wanted to know more about what Duncan had said, but her pride wouldn't let her hear it from Harold. So after a few moments of shifty glancing and shuffling, Courtney closed the door again and disappeared back inside her room.

When she went to the bathroom to change into her gym clothes a few minutes later, she called out through the door, "Have Bridgette untangle you if and when she gets here."

* * *

Tyler was a thinker—not a lot of people realized that about him. He had a lot of questions! Maybe not big ones, but they puzzled him nonetheless. He often found himself asking questions like, _Are redheaded bakers considered gingerbread men?_ and _If steroids are illegal for pro athletes, wouldn't it be fairer if Photoshop were illegal for pro models?_ AND _What if _déjà vu _means you just lost a life and are starting back from your last checkpoint?_

He got déjà vu all the time, and he almost methodically had radical near-death experiences.

Just some things to think about, though no one else ever really seemed to care much. Except for Lindsay. She was always happy to listen to his musings. Maybe that was why he liked her so much.

Also, she was really hot.

As he left his room and called the elevator, a new question occurred to him. What would happen if Pinocchio said "My nose is about to grow"? Now _that _was a thinker.

He was riding the elevator, still trying to puzzle his way to an answer, when it opened up on the second floor to let in Leshawna, Sadie, and Courtney.

"'Sup, Tyler?" Leshawna greeted. Sadie waved, and Courtney looked only mildly displeased to be surrounded by people, which was about as good as it ever got.

"Hey guys," he said as the girls crowded in. "What do you think would happen if Pinocchio said 'My nose is about to grow'?"

"That's a classic paradox, Tyler," Courtney replied, rolling her eyes.

Leshawna scoffed. "Doesn't make it a bad question! I bet his head explodes."

Sadie gasped at the thought. "That's so sad! Living in fear that your head might _explode_at any minute. I could neverlive my life like that! That would be like so...sad."

Courtney rolled her eyes a second time. "It took you that long to come up with the word 'sad'?"

"Whoa, no need to be rude!" Leshawna chastised, seemingly more offended than Sadie herself.

Courtney sighed. "Sorry. It's just—I have somewhere to be."

Tyler furrowed his brow. It was past dinner time already, and he knew for a fact that she hadn't been invited to his and Cody's epic foosball tournament. "Where do you have to be?"

"The...um..." Courtney trailed off. "Okay, so I don't have anywhere to be right this second. But I'm killing time _waiting _to do something, and I already went to the gym and showered and did my hair and went to dinner and came back, and I was going stir-crazy up in my room!"

"Why don't you hang out with Duncan?" Sadie offered innocently. "You guys always seem to get along."

Courtney barked out a laugh. "Right, if by 'get along' you mean 'I avoid Duncan like the bubonic plague'."

"People had a hell of a time avoiding that, too, if memory serves..." Leshawna said slyly, raising her eyebrows at Courtney.

"Yes, well," Courtney said, looking right back, "The people who did manage to avoid it were those willing to bathe, exercise, and practice good hygiene."

"Yeah, and the fools who sacrificed fashion for those freaky-ass bird masks!"

"I don't think dealing with Duncan will push me to such drastic measures."

"Aww," Sadie sighed. "But I thought you two liked each other!"

Tyler changed the topic before things escalated out of control. "SO, where did you have to be tonight?"

"That's none of your business!" Courtney snapped at both of them.

"_Again_," Leshawna said, "don't be rude!"

Courtney huffed and turned away to resolutely stare into a corner of the elevator. "Longest. Elevator ride. Ever."

"Ohemgee yeah," Sadie confirmed, still unphased by Courtney's hostility. "I feel like this is taking _way _longer than it usually does."

Tyler glanced around. "Oh. I see the problem!" he announced. "We didn't push the button." He chuckled, strode over to the panel, and smacked the letter L with a flourish. "Good thing I noticed." He deserved a pat on the back for that one, for sure.

He glanced back over to the corner, where Courtney looked about ready to bash her head into the large picture of Chris's face that decorated the back wall. It would be good of him to talk her out of that...

The elevator shuddered to life as Sadie launched into a story. "Gosh, I do that all the time. This one time, Katie and I were standing in an elevator for _half an hour _before we realized we hadn't even moved! We were so late for that movie... I mean, okay, we were running late in the first place, but that definitely didn't help. And guys, we barely lost a minute just now. That's nothing. And we bonded! That's like... um." She cut herself off and looked around the elevator. "Why aren't the doors opening?"

As if in answer to her question, the elevator lights flickered out and the music shut off.

"Oh, this is not good—"

The elevator jerkily dropped down another half-meter before the red emergency lights turned on.

"OH MY GOD, we're going to die!" Sadie wailed, clinging to Tyler in an instant.

"Someone...c-call a fireman!" he choked out around Sadie's grip on his torso.

"I'm tryin'!" Leshawna shouted back, swiftly walking over and squatting down in front of the floor panel. "There's no button for it!"

Courtney scoffed and looked around. "Don't be ridiculous. Every elevator in the nation of Canada has to have a permit, and to get a permit it has to be inspected, and to pass inspection it has to..." Courtney trailed off.

"What?!" Sadie asked, releasing Tyler with a flourish and turning to Courtney just as dramatically. "It has to _what?!"_

"It doesn't matter," Courtney replied bitterly, her expression flat. "This elevator doesn't have a permit." She gestured to the metal walls (Chris's face covering the largest), bathed in eerie red light. "Look for yourself."

Tyler glanced around in between leading Sadie through a deep breathing exercise. Courtney was right: the walls were bare.

He had to do something.

"Guys, it's fine," he announced, springing into action. "All we have to do is pry the door open! Let me handle this." He stepped around Sadie and sized up the door, cracking his knuckles. Before he could make any extraordinary displays of strength, however, he heard something on the other side of it. A blood-curdling shriek that could only mean one thing...

"LINDSAY?"

"Tiger, is that you?"

"Yeah, Lindsay, it's me, Tyler!" he cried, flattening his face against the door. "Are you okay?"

"It's really dark out here," Lindsay whimpered, her voice coming through the door surprisingly clearly. It occurred to Tyler that the buttons might not have been the only things that weren't up to code. And was her voice coming from...higher than it should have been? If he wasn't mistaken, that last jolt of the elevator had left them between floors!

"Okay, Lindsay, don't panic," he instructed. "Sadie, also don't panic. Courtney, Leshawna..." He paused, trying to figure out how he could chivalrously direct the remaining girls without offending either of them.

Fortunately, Leshawna saved him from having to make the difficult call. "Lindsay!" She knocked on the elevator door. "Go get help!"

"Help with whaaaat? It's so dark out here. Why isn't the door opening?"

"This is just _great_," Courtney huffed, pacing back and forth in the small space—though to Tyler it mostly looked like she was spinning in a circle. "Of _course_ Chris didn't bother to certify this thing. We could sue him for this! I'm going to SUE him for this! This is a danger to everyone! We could quite possibly die today, and all because he couldn't be bothered to make _one _stupid phone call!"

Courtney seemed to reach a temporary end to her rant, kicking something invisible and gnome sized, which Tyler took as his cue to put his ear back to the door. "Lindsay, is there _anyone _nearby who can help?"

"Well," she said, sniffling a bit. "Duncan's here too..."

"_Duncan!?_"

What Tyler had thought was just a faulty mechanical noise actually sounded a _whole _lot more like someone snickering uncontrollably, now that he thought about it.

"Go find someone who can help us!" Tyler implored over Courtney's shout.

"Who's in there with you?" the blonde asked.

"Who does it sound like, girl?" Leshawna yelled from her place at the button panel.

"Lawanda?"

"And Sadie!" said Sadie.

"_And _Princess, am I right?" Duncan sang from the other side of the door.

"Duncan, what are you doing out there?" Courtney snapped from Tyler's right, pressing herself up against the door as well.

"I _was _waiting for the elevator, babe," he replied. "Though I think I might just go and take the stairs, now..."

"Don't you dare, punk!" Leshawna cut in, shoving Courtney into Tyler for her own chunk of elevator door space. "You are _not _leaving us here in this death-trap!"

"Death-trap?" Sadie repeated, retreating into the far corner and sliding down the wall. "Katie, where ARE youuuuuuuuuuuu?"

"Sadie? SADIE!"

"No way..." Tyler murmured, for somehow, _someway_, Katie had materialized on the other side of the door as well.

"Don't give up, Sadie!" Katie shouted, startlingly loud and clear from Tyler's position right up against the door. "You can make it! There's only one floor below you anyway, you could survive the fall!"

"NOT HELPING!"

Over the wails that ensued, what was perhaps the most familiar (and also the most feared) voice they knew joined those already outside. "Ooh, what is going on here, you three?"

"Chris," Tyler cried, "dude!" He pounded on the door a couple times. "You've got to get us out of here."

"What's this?" Chris asked. "Ex-campers stuck in the elevator? How did such a thing happen?"

"It's your fault!" Courtney screamed in the general direction of his voice. "You never got this elevator inspected!"

"Oh yeah..." Chris said thoughtfully. "That's been on my to-do list forever. Well actually, I did call some mechanics a while ago, but then I had a better idea and ended up putting them to work on this other project upstairs." He laughed his signature laugh and Tyler felt his skin crawl. Chris sighed happily, then slapped the side of the elevator. "This thing isn't supposed to be in operation, but I figured, why take a perfectly good elevator away from you kids?"

"_Because it could kill us!_"

"C'mon now, children, you've survived worse," Chris pointed out.

"Especially Princess," Duncan chirped in agreement.

"Yeah! Because of YOU!" Leshawna barked accusingly.

Tyler had to recognize, that was probably true. Being trapped in a dark, confined space on the teetering edge of certain death with three fellow campers was just another Tuesday back on Wawanakwa.

"That's _it_," Courtney declared. "Tyler, boost me up."

"Why?"

"Since no one else here is capable of helping us, I'm climbing out."

"_Rude_."

"No!" Tyler shouted. "I can't let you put yourself in danger like that!" He thought for a moment, staring up at the ceiling. It wasn't _that _large of an elevator... "I'll do it!"

Leshawna disagreed immediately. "Neither of you are doin' it!"

"_Tyler's_ not." Courtney turned, pointing a finger at him. "There's no way I'm letting _you_ stand on _me_."

"So I'll stand on Leshawna!"

"Oh no you won't!"

"Tyler, just _boost me up_. Besides," Courtney added, raising her eyebrows at him. "Someone has to stay down here to take care of Sadie and Lindsay."

A side-glance at Sadie, who was clawing at the door in an attempt to get to Katie, convinced him. Plus, it might have been even worse to leave the three girls alone. Tyler sighed and obediently wove his hands into a foothold. Courtney deftly stepped onto it and up to his shoulders, going to work on loosening one of the ceiling tiles right away.

_"What's this?_" Chris called, easily switching into host mode. "_Could it be?"_ The four observers outside the elevator were silent for a second, presumably listening to the racket within. _"It sounds to me like Courtney's orchestrating a break-out!" _

"Tyce, I will get in there if it's the first thing I do!" Lindsay cried valiantly.

_"And then we have Lindsay_," Chris continued, "_desperately trying to reach her boyfriend on the other side of the cruel metal door!"_

"Don't worry, babe, I'll be out soon!" Tyler reassured her with a wince (turned out Courtney wasn't as graceful—or light—as she sometimes made it seem), though he wondered what exactly qualified as 'desperate' and hoped Lindsay wasn't doing anything too foolish.

"HA!" In a moment of triumph, Courtney threw the ceiling tile aside and began pulling herself into the shaft.

_"And it sounds to me like Courtney's remedied the tile situation!"_Chris narrated.

"No, don't jump!" Duncan cried, cackling all the while. "Don't do it, Princess! Your life doesn't suck THAT hard!"

"Shut up, Duncan! I'm saving all of us!"

She was three-quarters of the way off of Tyler's shoulders (_thank goodness) _when Leshawna reached up and yanked on her ankle, almost pulling her down onto both of them. "Get back _down _here!"

"NO!"

"Well I'm not letting you go in the shaft!" Leshawna shouted with a tug.

"WHY NOT?"

"Yeah," Tyler hacked out, straining under the CIT's weight and Leshawna's added force. "Why not?"

As the girls bickered, Tyler overheard Chris outside. "_Will Leshawna talk some sense into Courtney? Or is Courtney really on the way to saving all their lives? It's this or cannibalism, folks!"_

"That escalated quickly..." Tyler muttered, struggling to not topple over.

"_And there goes Duncan, sprinting up the stairs! What could that rascal possibly have to add to this already precarious situation?"_

"Leshawna," Courtney reasoned, "we'll _die _if we all stay in here! We might overweigh the elevator!"

Leshawna released Courtney's ankle suddenly, only to free her hand for an indignant, possibly rude gesture. "Now what in the _blazes _is that supposed to mean?"

"Since there's no permit," Tyler explained logically, "we don't know the max weight limit. And with you _and _Sadie, it's possible we're already at risk of—"

Leshawna grabbed a fistful of Tyler's jacket and pulled him over, which relieved him of Courtney's burden. To her credit, she took the loss of pedestal remarkably well and skillfully scrambled up and out of the elevator.

"Run that by me again, stringbean!" Leshawna spat in his face. "I'll climb out and throw you off the elevator too!"

Tyler's eyes widened. "Please don't."

* * *

Courtney grunted as she swung herself onto the rocking elevator roof—which was _not _quite as steady as she had anticipated—and tried to block out the sounds of bickering below her. She peered up at the shaft.

It was dark. And large. The space below her was much worse.

"All right, Courtney, make a plan," she told herself. She could climb the cables to the second or third floor, like a gym class rope. But what good would that do if the doors weren't open?

She had only a minimal working knowledge of how elevators operated, and that only came from what she'd seen on TV and read in books. Her knowledge of electrical circuits was barely comparable and if she were to be honest, she wasn't quite sure what she intended—

A screech echoed down the shaft, followed by a loud _thump!_

"Princess, you down there?"

Courtney squinted at the dim chink of light that had opened several meters above her. "Duncan?! What are you doing?"

"Saving you!" He got down on his stomach and wiggled forward until his head (and part of his torso) were hanging into the shaft.

Seeing as her quote-unquote "savior" was backed by the second floor emergency lights, all Courtney could make out was his silhouette. (It turned out his shoulders looked quite nice when you couldn't see the face above them. But that was neither here nor there.) "I don't need _saving_, Duncan."

"You say that every time I save you."

"That was _ONE time_!"

He chuckled to himself, glancing around the open shaft. "So, what's your plan?"

Courtney opened her mouth and shut it again, casting around for options. Hopefully, she was as much a silhouette to Duncan as he was to her, because at the moment she was certain she looked clueless. "My _plan _doesn't concern you," she bluffed, "so while I appreciate you stopping by to chat, please—"

Duncan interrupted. "There is no plan, is there?"

"Of course there's a plan!"

"It's okay, Princess," Duncan continued. "I, also, don't have a plan."

"You don't have a plan either!?" she shouted. "Duncan, how are you—?"

Duncan pointed at her. "AH-HAH!"

"You mean to tell me you just thought you'd pry those doors open and see what happened?" she said exasperatedly, ignoring her slip to better honor her frustration.

Duncan sighed dramatically. "No, no, no. Babe, you underestimate me. One: I _had_ a plan. But that drop's actually a lot farther down than I thought it would be..." He wiggled himself a few centimeters back into the hallway. "_Sooo _that plan's toast."

"Awesome. That's really great, Duncan," Courtney began, readying herself to verbally rip apart all his inadequacies.

His silhouette held up a hand to stop her, and then two fingers. "Two: how is what I did any weirder than you hopping on top of a cheap elevator without a plan?"

"I am here in—excuse me—_on_ an uninspected elevator, trying to come up with a plan to save not only myself but _three _other innocent victims of Chris's oversight, and the only thing you—"

The elevator jolted, making a particularly violent spasm beneath Courtney's feet. She screeched and wrapped herself around the nearest elevator cable. "DAMMIT!" she shouted, stomping hard on the roof, "Would you three CALM _DOWN_!"

"I'm not the one stomping around on the roof like a rhinoceros!" Leshawna barked back up.

"The irony, it _burns_," Duncan chuckled. His silhouette rolled around where he lay for a long second before he flipped onto his back to look down on Courtney upside-down. Like he was hanging off a bed rather than off the second floor opening of an elevator shaft. "Okay, Princess, you are obviously in no state to be climbing around in elevator shafts, so here's what's going to happen."

Courtney started to protest, but Duncan cut her off smoothly. "Believe it or not, eventually, you're going to calm down and realize you can't fix this from in here. When that happens, you will climb back down—because up is _way _too far away to be an option—and I'll go downstairs and open the doors now, so you can then kiss me passionately for saving your life. Sound good?"

"Why didn't you just go downstairs in the first place?! You are SO _dense_!"

"I told you," Duncan said with a smirk, his head and shoulders vanishing, "I had a plan. Sit tight, Princess!"

"_Sit tight, Princess_," Courtney mimicked, distorting her features as much as possible. She didn't like his plan any more than the idea of a dangerous rope-climb to the second floor, but Duncan was probably halfway to the lobby already and, as much as she wanted to deny it, that fact did make her feel a bit better.

"And I'm not kissing you!" she shouted as an afterthought.

* * *

"Sadie, don't listen to them! I think you're beautiful no matter how big or small you are!"

Tyler was once more pushed out of the way as Sadie mashed herself up against the door in the space Courtney had vacated a few minutes ago, though she didn't fit it quite as well. "Katie, promise me you'll tell Bobby Fisher from fourth grade that I always loved him!"

"Wait, you _did_?"

"OMG! Tyson, are you still okay?" Lindsay interrupted. "Has the weight thing surpassed yet and plummeted you to your death?!"

That was a negatory, though sometime between when Courtney had started walking around on top of them and the present, they had experienced a scary drop that left the lobby (and his girlfriend) even further above them. Courtney was shouting something, too, though Sadie's wailing and Leshawna's barked threats about using him as floss unless he took back his comment about her weight (which he hadn't intended as insulting at all!) prevented him from overhearing. As far as Tyler could tell, the cables were holding strong, but the elevator itself was quaking back and forth in a very unnerving way...

Tyler couldn't dwell on the thought, as he was soon distracted by another one of Chris's announcements.

"_And it looks like Duncan's returned to the scene! And what's this he has with him?"_

"A crowbar," Duncan answered.

"_A crowbar!"_

"A _crowbar_?!" Courtney's cry echoed back around the shaft after finding its way into the elevator. Her head poked in through the opening in the tiles, upside down and panicked. "He did that with a _crowbar_?! Somebody stop him! _CHRIS!_"

"Tut tut, Courtney!" the host responded, dropping the narration. "It's not my place to get between two teens in love!"

Sadie and Katie _awwww_-ed from their respective sides of the door, but Courtney's reaction was just as Tyler had anticipated.

"That cloying thought actually makes me WANT to fall off this elevator and die!" Her upside down hair made her look even angrier. Or maybe that was just the being upside down.

"Ah, Princess," Duncan said over an uncomfortable scraping sound that Tyler guessed was the crowbar. "The fall wouldn't kill you. Only maim you! You'd probably only lose your arms."

"And what good would I be to anyone without arms?" she spat back.

The scraping seemed to be getting more forceful so Tyler, to be on the safe side (if there WAS a safe side in this situation), forcefully pulled Sadie back a good distance from the door. Luckily, there was nothing but smooth metal for her to grab onto or else he might have been less successful in peeling her away from Katie.

She started sobbing again anyway.

Duncan was still arguing with Courtney. "Hey, Beethoven lost his arms, and he turned into an awesome violinist!"

"STOP TALKING ABOUT THINGS YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND!"

All the sudden, a loud sizzling noise drowned out whatever reply was made, followed by a louder thud.

"_Ouch! And Duncan's out cold!" _Chris informed them all. "_Looks_ _like he got electrocuted trying to rescue his peers and love interest!"_

"I AM NOT HIS LOVE INTEREST!"

"Wait..." Tyler thought for a moment, but Lindsay voiced his (almost)-exact thoughts.

"How did the electricity cute him if there's no electricity?"

"Unless..." Leshawna's face lit up as she realized it. "The electricity's back! Heck yeah!"

Sadie glanced about slowly, fanning her tearstained face. "Should someone get Courtney, then...?"

"No need," Courtney said, executing a perfect swing back into the elevator just as the lights flickered back on.

The elevator shuddered back to life along with the music (_"Dear Mom and Dad, I'm doing fine..."_) and the doors 'ding'ed open a second later to reveal that the elevator had indeed fallen past the first floor. Tyler's head barely lined up with the lobby tiles, but from what he could see, there was Chris, on his knees peering in at them and smiling sadistically; Lindsay, who immediately threw herself at Tyler and fell into the elevator herself; Katie, who aside from her screams of joy, looked as if she might pass out from all the stress; and Duncan, who actually _was _passed out on the floor.

"All right, well, ladies first!" Tyler declared, getting down on one knee and trying not to make a face as Sadie frantically clambered over him like a human step-stool. Leshawna followed (that wasn't much better), then Courtney and Lindsay, and after a few botched attempts, Tyler hoisted himself out as well.

"Callie, aren't you going to help him?" Lindsay asked after a second, gesturing to Duncan, passed out on the ground.

"Why should I?" Courtney asked crossly, already halfway down the hall on her way to the beach doors.

"Because he's your love interest!" Chris filled in, delighting in the annoyance that Courtney was obviously fighting to suppress.

She turned to face the host and took a deep breath. "It may be true that, according to whatever so-called 'dedicated masses' you've paid off to watch this show, I am _his_ love interest. But, love is _not_ a two-way street, so that does _NOT _make him mine!" She emphasized this declaration with a stomp.

Leshawna nudged the side of Duncan's head with her foot. "I dunno... Looks like homeboy's out cold." She nudged him again. "You know CPR?"

"Of _course _I know CPR," Courtney sighed like the question was an insult. "But this is hardly the time for that. What I _really _need is a defibrillator, but I'm guessing you don't have one of those here either," she said, pointedly staring at Chris.

"That would be a good guess." Chris crossed his arms and, when he realized the teens were still staring at him, added, "..._And _a correct one!"

"Courtney, do something!" Katie begged, squatting on her knees and poking at Duncan's face.

"I think he's dead," Sadie whispered.

"He's not _dead! _Ugh, step aside," Courtney said, shepherding Katie and Sadie away from the boy on the floor and trying to quell the small part of her that was panicking at the thought that Sadie_ could_—though the probability was very, very, minutely small—be right.

She squatted next to him, put her hands on his chest, and began chest compressions. "Guys, if he got electrocuted I _seriously _doubt CPR is what he needs!" She put her ear to his heart. "Besides, his heart rate is fine and his breathing is...oh."

Lindsay clung on to Tyler. "Is he dead yet?"

"I mean, no, but..." Courtney's nose wrinkled up in distaste. There was no way she was actually going to have to start in on rescue breaths...was there? "This doesn't make sense." Courtney was getting flustered. People were looking at her. Would she be to blame if he died? "His heart rate is normal, he should be breathing!"

"Do the kiss-breathing-thing!" Tyler shouted.

"_Looks to me like Courtney's facing a dilemma," _Chris announced, though he sounded somewhat distracted. _"Kiss the love interest she despises, or let him die?"_

"That's not fair!" Courtney cried. "That's just—you know what, okay. Okay." With an anguished look, Courtney plugged Duncan's nose, opened his mouth, leaned in...

"Wait!" Chris said suddenly, rubbing his chin in thought as he tried to remember something. "Does a defibrillator look like a little box with a red cross on it?"

Courtney drew herself up quickly, desperately. "Yes! Yes, that's exactly what they look like!"

"You know, I think I might have a defibrillator down here after all..."

Courtney's eye twitched as she repeated, "You think you _might_ have a defibrillator down here _after all_."

"Ah, yup. I definitely do." Chris walked around the perimeter of the lobby, paused at a painting, and took it right off the wall. "Here it is!"

"You _hid _your defibrillator?" Courtney asked incredulously.

Chris took a deep breath and then said all at once, "I only had it installed to put Izzy down in extreme cases! Get off my back, woman!" He took another breath and then explained normally, "The contractors suggested it as a more fun alternative to a taser! More versatile, too, and just as effective. Chef and I thought it sounded like a fine idea."

"Makes sense to me," Lindsay chipped in.

"YOU ARE ALL MORONS!" Courtney yelled from where she still knelt over Duncan. "Someone get me that defibrillator, _now!_"

"I'll do it!" Tyler offered, running to meet Chris.

"It's behind glass, dude," the host informed him.

"No problem!" Tyler pulled back his fist, wound it up, and punched. "_Ouch!" _

_"And Tyler didn't even make a dent!"_

"How thick is that glass?!"

Chris grinned. "Not _too _thick."

"I have to do everything myself!" Courtney cried, standing up and walking to the felled painting. Then, using martial arts skill that Tyler had never seen rivaled, she kicked in the glass in one swift movement.

Tyler gaped at her. Chris looked from the shattered glass to Courtney nervously. Courtney herself snatched the defibrillator from its alcove and ran back to Duncan and the crowd around him. Kneeling down next to the criminal once more, she turned the machine on, cranked it to medium voltage and, gripping the paddles, began rubbing them together furiously. Then, she took a deep breath, remembered her training, and poised the paddles over his chest.

"You sure you know what you're doing?" Leshawna asked, just as Courtney was trying to convince herself that she did. "Although between you me, it's okay if you don't." She leaned in close to Courtney and held up a hand to hide her mouth from the others as she muttered, "I'd give you a medal for killin' him. Just so long as you made it look like an accident."

"I'm not going to kill him," Courtney assured everyone, but she could hear the hollowness in her claim.

"I'll give you ten bucks if you do," Chris said cheerfully.

She glared at him for a second before she took another, deeper breath. She poised the paddles again.

"CLEAR!" she called with as much confidence as she could muster.

And the second she did, Duncan jolted to life. She hadn't even touched him.

"Whoa, whoa! Hold your horses, Princess!" he insisted frantically, shuffling a little bit away from her. "I'm good! I'm good!"

_"DUNCAN!" _Courtney flailed and pushed herself in the opposite direction, throwing down the paddles as she did.

"I don't like the idea of getting tased," Duncan explained, breathing quickly. "Especially not twice in the same couple of minutes."

"You _FAKER!"_

"Well, y'know, I was holding out for that passionate kiss you promised me." He wagged his brows.

"What you were _HOLDING_ was _YOUR BREATH!_ THAT WHOLE _TIME!_" Courtney shouted. She was pretty sure she was hyperventilating where she sat, staring at Duncan in shock.

"All part of the plan." He smirked.

"You _planned _to electrocute yourself?"

"Not exactly. But you have to roll with the punches, babe."

Courtney sat for a few more seconds, but after a visible shudder, she stood, dusted herself off, and turned to Chris. "If it wasn't for me, you never would have gotten that elevator restarted. You're _lucky _they teach circuitry to CITs," she snarled.

Duncan scoffed, lying back down comfortably on the floor. "Yeah, right. And they teach Olympic diving to juvie inmates."

Courtney turned to Duncan and kicked him hard in the thigh. "Roll with THAT, you Neanderthal!"

And before anyone could further interrupt her day, she turned on her heel and walked off.

"Don't go too far, Princess!" Duncan called after her, grinning despite how he clutched at his femur. "Remember, we've got places to be tonight!"

Tyler assumed that was code for something, as Courtney was stalled enough to throw a glare over her shoulder but not enough to argue back. She disappeared around a corner a moment later, hands still in fists.

"That's gonna bruise!" Chris paused, looking around with a happy sigh. "Well, that _was _a fun distraction," he said, turning to the remaining teens, "but I'd better be on my way."

"Where are you going?" Tyler asked.

"Back to the island. Giant final challenges don't just prepare themselves, you know." He grinned smugly, but after a second his expression turned stern. "BUT: don't think that just because Chef and I won't be here, you can pull some crazy stunts like you did last time." He looked pointedly at Duncan who just gazed back at him innocently.

Lindsay stopped admiring Tyler to ask, "What happened last time, again?"

"There were the chores you guys half-assed or didn't do at all... because of the pool...that you froze..." Chris was met with a blank stare from the blonde. "And the hockey? And the early poolside?" No response.

The host turned to her boyfriend. "Dude, Tyler. You picked yourself a winner."

"I know," Tyler replied, grinning, looking over Lindsay's thick blonde hair (she sure had great hair...) in time to see Chris shrug and walk away.

The group stood in silence until Chris had exited the lobby and the door had swung completely shut. Duncan was the one to break it.

"We are going to cause _so much _mayhem!" He looked around like he wanted to high-five someone, but couldn't find anyone suitable. "This is gonna be sick."

As Duncan limped to his feet (he was still holding a hand to the thigh Courtney had dented) and lapsed into what were probably the first stages of a devious plan, Tyler looked around. Katie and Sadie were stuck in an embrace and hopping around in circles, which baffled him on a couple different levels. Leshawna was half-heartedly shaking her head at Duncan's comment, and Lindsay was still wrapped around his waist.

"So," Tyler asked the room in general, as they awkwardly stood about, "Do you guys think butterflies feel people in their stomachs when they fall in love?"

* * *

We feel that Tyler is an underutilized character. Also, we didn't come up with any of his deep and probing questions on our own. #thanksinternet

(*Rina is the not bold. Stray is the bold.) **(STRAY IS THE DARK SIDE OF THE FORCE) **It's a mess, sorry.

_SO today we're bringing you a very special author's note, because unlike the others, this one is being written in: __**REAL TIME. **__Yes! Stray, do you want to be the bold? __**Happily! If you'll have me ;) **__That's inappropriate talk for an author's note, you rascal. I'm really liking the word rascal lately. Sorry, I keep interrupting you trying to type. __**YOU SCALLYWAG. **__I have no idea how you spell scallywag properly. __**THAT MAKES TWO OF US. Hah, but seriously, this was a terrible idea. Nothing productive is going to get said. It's three in the morning. **__We can do this. Talk about Tyler and the inspiration for his thoughts! Or should we see if the readers can guess...? __**We like seeing who hangs out in the same parts of the internet that we do. Let them guess. Here's a hint: Tyler hangs out in those same parts of the internet too. **__That's a terrible hint. __**Yes. Yes it is. **__Devious. But yes, stray and I wanted to explore Tyler's POV and found that his defining characteristic is being overly chivalrous. Poor guy, tries so hard. __**Like with sports and flirting, being chivalrous is something he prides himself with being good at and like the previously mentioned things, he's terrible at it. Though not for lack of trying! Which is why he wins brownie points with us. **__He does indeed. And we hope everyone enjoyed the DxC moments in this chapter! We know the last one was lacking. And when I say lacking I mean "Courtney wasn't present for one second of last chapter, sorry." __**It was a Courtney drought. But those are few and far between around these parts. And we hope Harold's revenge was suitable for those of you on or against Team Harold. **__*Duncan's revenge on Harold. ...GOD I'M A MONSTER. __**THIS IS WHAT WE ARE GOOD FOR. GOSH. EDITING ME IN AUTHOR'S NOTE. IS THERE NOTHING SACRED TO YOU? **__I have no response to that. I can't. __**#glare**__ I think we're done here. __**I feel like there was something else I wanted to bring up...something about people wanting to see chapters sooner or wanting us to release dates when we'd be updating? **__I'd like to see that magic trick. Our updates are my favorite mythical creatures. __**I know that meme! Ha. **__You taught me that meme.__** I'm so proud #happycry **__Seriously though, say whatchu gotta say because we've probably lost half of everybody by now. __**Rrrrright! So yes, we'll be trying to build a base/backlog of chapters so that we can try to reasonably release chapters but the fact holds true that I've got another project to dedicate the majority of my time to and Rina has to...dance or something. A lot. **__#collegeishard But we love you all and we love this story, which is why we keep coming back to it! We're genuinely sorry the going is so slow, but it's also steady. __**Like, if you do the math for the amount of chapters we write and how long we've been at this, we come to a regular update period of...um...Rina. Do the math. **__Hahahah. This is chapter 23. When did we put up chapter 1? __**January 2010 is when Chapter 1 went up but we were writing it as early as October 2009 (hence our anniversary date). **__We're talking updates though, so that's about...8 chapters a year, which is one every...1.5 months. __**See? In the grand scheme, that's not so bad. **__I like talking in averages. Like now is my average bedtime. So I'm out! __**I'm a vampire. We need no sleep. But I do have a novel to write, soooo...PEACE OUT.**_

* * *

Thanks for reading! Please review (:


	24. Never put words in someone else's mouth

**Rule 24: Never put words in someone else's mouth**

Welcome back to the pandemonium that is TAOP, everyone! Thanks for coming back.

If you'll recall, when we left Courtney, she had chatted with Harold, gotten stuck in an elevator, and nearly electrocuted Duncan with a defibrillator. And now, we learn her fate...

* * *

"Uh, Duncan?"

The delinquent looked at Geoff from where he was hanging upside-down over the edge of the couch. "Sup?"

The blond exchanged a hesitant look with DJ before saying, "Uh, not that I'm against it or anything, bro, but...what are we doing?"

"Plotting," Duncan replied simply. "We, my man, are plotting." Not that anyone looking in on them would have been able to tell.

The three boys had commandeered the television in the hotel's lobby and lined the couch and surrounding lounge chairs into a right angle of impenetrable cushiony wall that, when pushed into the corner of the room, resembled a square fort. Their original plan had been to find something decent on TV (even hardcore pranksters had to relax _sometimes_), but they soon discovered that the TV only played reruns of TDI, and that was the _last _thing any of them wanted to see. So they were at present, as Duncan so eloquently put it, plotting.

"I get that, man," DJ said, stroking Bunny on his lap. It wasn't the evil stroking of a genius mastermind coming up with a secret plot for world domination, though. It was just a guy and his bunny. Duncan rolled his eyes—Deej could have put a little more effort into looking evil. It was such a missed opportunity! "It's just..." DJ went on, looking at Geoff again.

"Are you feeling okay?" Geoff finished, looking at Duncan quizzically.

Duncan had only been half paying attention to them, hanging upside-down and staring at the wall half of the fort, imagining all the hijinks he could pull off with Courtney if he could just get her to see things his way. The prop room was a goldmine of prank material, and he'd hardly explored half of it. And with Chris off the island? Double the chaos, double the fun.

At Geoff's words, he glanced back at his friend, trying to wipe the daydreaming look from his face completely.

"I'm feeling peachy," he said quickly. He squinted at them, which felt a little strange considering blood had been pooling in his skull for at least ten minutes already. "Why do you ask?"

"I don't know if you've noticed, dude, but you've been pretty...well... kinda quiet today," Geoff commented, scratching under his hat.

Duncan stared at him blankly.

"We haven't bothered anyone lately," DJ clarified. 'Bothered' was his generous way of describing what Geoff and Duncan proudly called pranking and what probably _should_ have been called ceaseless torment.

"Other than giving Camera-Crony a swirly," Geoff amended, holding up a finger.

Duncan chuckled. "Yeah, that was a great moment."

"Haven't you caused that man enough pain already?" DJ chided.

"Neverrrr!" Geoff hollered and Bunny burrowed under DJ's arm.

"When did you even have time to do that? I was with you all day!"

Duncan and Geoff exchanged a sly look but said no more.

Changing the topic back to their lack of activity, Duncan sat himself upright on the couch and, after letting the moment of vertigo pass, leaned in and gestured for his friends to do the same.

"I know today's been quiet so far, but that's all about to change," he told them, grinning wickedly. "I've got something epic in the works. Chris is off the island until evacuation day, the power's as unpredictable as Izzy, Heather's in a pissy mood thanks to yours truly..." He paused a moment to appreciate that fact. "_And_ Courtney is right where I want her."

Spotting something over Duncan's shoulder, Geoff started waving madly in the direction of the lobby entrance. DJ and Duncan turned around and saw that, as if summoned by supernatural forces, none other than Courtney and Bridgette had appeared on the other side of the glass doors.

Bridgette returned Geoff's wave and moved to push the doors open, but Courtney grabbed her wrist and said... something to her. The doors didn't let the sound through, but Bridgette's smile faded as she eyed Duncan through the door.

"Dude," Geoff started, his arm still waving as if he'd forgotten about it. "I think we're being talked about."

"You _think_?" Duncan slapped his hand down and turned away from the door. Then, deciding that wasn't enough, he flipped upside-down on the couch again, giving Courtney an excellent view of his feet.

"Are you _sure_ Courtney's right where you want her?" DJ started suspiciously, eyeing the door. "She looks a little..."

"A little like she's not coming in here if it kills her!" Geoff shouted, more gleefully than was probably necessary.

DJ winced a little, but didn't contradict him. "You should check this out, Dunc. It's like a silent movie out there!"

"So bring out the popcorn," he said dryly. The world was really not doing him any favors. There he was, bragging about having Courtney right where he wanted her, then lo and behold, Courtney materializes to show everyone just how _not_ where he wanted her she really was.

Courtney and Bridgette were still on the other side of the glass door, having what looked like a second degree argument and glancing over at the three boys more times than any of them thought was needed.

Geoff caught Bridgette's eye and blew her a kiss, after which Bridgette turned back to Courtney and started pleading with renewed fervor.

"This really _is_ like a silent movie," Geoff said in awe, staring out at the girls. Suddenly, he broke focus, bouncing up and down in his seat. "Deej! Deej! Deej! You know what we should do?"

"What?"

"Okay, you be Courtney, and I'll be Bridgette. It'll be _hilarious_!"

"I hate everything about this right now," Duncan muttered, frowning.

DJ's eyes widened. "I don't know if I'm down for that, dude..."

"Nah, it's easy, check this out. I'm Bridgette." Geoff cleared his throat and started talking in a high-pitched voice. "C'mon, Courtney, we only have to go in for a _minute_. I really want to see Geoff because I miss him so much and I'm _so_ horny right now."

Duncan snorted, but DJ looked offended on Bridgette's behalf. "I don't think that's what she's saying!"

"Dude, dude, Courtney's talking now, you go!"

"What do I say?"

"Anything! Just go!"

DJ adopted a girly voice as well. "I know you want to see Geoff, but Duncan's in there and I DON'T want to deal with him right now."

"But _Courtneeeeey_."

"I'm sorry, but I've made up my mind!"

"But _Courtneeeeeeeeeeeey_."

"Nothing you say is going to make me want to go in there. Those boys are too mean and pull too many pranks!"

Geoff narrowed his eyes at DJ and went on in his Bridgette voice, "Okay one, they pull just enough pranks, and two, Geoff's hair looks really good today!"

DJ turned away from the glass doors for a second to evaluate Geoff's hair. He turned back to find that Courtney was talking again, and looking their way. "Geoff's wearing a hat. You can't tell what his hair looks like!"

"Can too!" Geoff answered, not even bothering to see if he was doing an accurate lip reading.

"Can not!"

"Can too!"

Duncan scoffed. "You two are terrible at this."

Bridgette grabbed Courtney's wrist and looked at her imploringly, so Geoff continued. "C'mon, Court. Just come in for a second and look at Geoff's hair. You don't even have to talk to Duncan if you don't want to."

Courtney's resolve looked like it was cracking. "But..." DJ coughed and returned to his normal voice. "Aight, I'm out. I have no clue what she's saying anymore."

"Yeah," Geoff said, giving up the game as well. "Girls are complicated."

Hearing that made Duncan want to check out what could possibly be happening that was so unclear, but by the time he'd sat up Bridgette was already pushing through the doors and walking over to their fort. Courtney, on the other hand, was still standing resolutely on the other side of the door.

Bridgette smiled at the three boys as she made her way over, giving Geoff a peck on the cheek before settling onto his lap. "So, Duncan," she began after waving hello to DJ, "I heard you got electrocuted today. How are you holding up?"

"Eh, can't complain," he said nonchalantly. "It was better than being tazed."

Bridgette chuckled. "I believe it. So what have you three been up to?"

"_Nothing_," Geoff complained, looking pointedly at Duncan.

Duncan threw his hands up. "Hey, it's not my fault your lives are boring without me!"

"Whoa, who said anything about _my _life being boring?" DJ cut in.

"Okay, okay, guys," Bridgette said soothingly, as she often did. "If it makes you feel any better, this is the most interesting thing _I've _done all day and this isn't even—" She was distracted by a thunking sound. "What's that?"

Without a word, Geoff took her shoulders and rotated her to face the glass doors. Courtney had been knocking on them and, now that she had Bridgette's attention, was vigorously tapping at the imaginary watch on her wrist.

"If you'll excuse me for a moment," Bridgette said, standing up and out of Geoff's lap, much to his confusion and dismay.

Bridgette started making large gestures at Courtney from behind one of the couches, which Courtney actively returned. Among them were several numbers, various shapes, a couple head-jerks in the boys' direction, and a handful of other things that Duncan had no idea how to classify.

"_Five_," Bridgette said, mouthing it at Courtney and holding up her hand, "_minutes_."

Courtney rolled her eyes, held up three fingers, and pointed to her imaginary watch again. Bridgette gave her a thumbs up, which seemed to settle the matter, and sat back down again.

"Sorry about that," she said, chuckling. "We couldn't quite agree on how we wanted to spend our time tonight, if you know what I mean."

"Oh, really?" Duncan asked, glowering. "Because that wasn't clear from your game of Charades."

DJ widened his eyes, but Geoff piped up before there was a chance to reply. "I think Courtney flipped you off somewhere in there, babe. Like nearly positive."

"I guess it's always a possibility," Bridgette allowed, snuggling a bit closer to Geoff. "But you've got to pick your battles, you know?"

"If you were a battle, I would pick you."

"Aww, Geoff."

"I'd win it, too—for you, babe."

The situation had taken a sudden and dramatic turn for the lovey-dovey, and while that didn't seem to be bothering DJ, it made Duncan want to gag. He was casting around for something to distract himself, trying to block out their mushy love talk, when his gaze landed on Courtney, pacing around outside.

_Princess!_, he mouthed, rightening himself and popping up over the back of the couch. He waved. It didn't take more than a second to catch her attention, and she responded by mouthing "What?" and holding her arms out angrily. Or maybe she'd really shouted it. It was difficult to tell through the glass.

Duncan smirked and nodded in the direction of the seat beside him, patting it suggestively.

Courtney flipped him off. There was no ambiguity.

Duncan shrugged and hoped that "Suit yourself!" was communicated across the room. He was about to turn away when Courtney started pointing at something behind him. When Duncan turned to look, he found it was Bridgette.

_What? _he mouthed, shrugging innocently.

Courtney began pointing even more insistently, to which Duncan cupped a hand around his ear and pointed at it, shaking his head. It was obvious what she wanted from him, but Duncan wasn't about to make things easy for her.

Courtney's "Ugh!" was practically audible as she turned from the door, stormed away two steps, and then whirled back around. She mimicked Duncan's gesture and threw her arms up, clearly pointing out that unless Duncan was blind, there was no need to _hear_ anything.

She stared at him for a second more, as if the threat of what she might do would make him comply. He shrugged again like he didn't understand and shook his head.

Courtney rolled her eyes. Then, she did the strangest thing. So subtly Duncan almost didn't notice it, Courtney glanced over at Bridgette and the boys to make sure they were distracted and then looked right at Duncan. She pointed to her invisible watch.

Now Duncan was thrown. He cased the room and pointed to the wall clock that read the current time.

Courtney visibly sighed, looked up, and mouthed something like _why me _before settling an irked glare back on Duncan. She jabbed a finger at him, then at herself, pointed up, and then indicated her invisible watch with two taps.

Duncan grinned. She wanted to know what time their escapade was going down! And if she thought the prop room was upstairs, then she _really_ needed his help. But if Duncan had interpreted correctly and that really was the case, then Courtney _was _right where he wanted her, and that was just too perfect to comprehend.

He flashed her a grin and ten fingers at Mohawk level to make eleven. It was either eleven or a set of antlers, but he was hoping Courtney would infer the time.

She acknowledged him with a slight downturn of her lips before she looked back to Bridgette and the wall clock he'd pointed out. Courtney took to rapping on the door again.

Bridgette resurfaced from staring dreamily into Geoff's eyes at the sound and turned to the door. Courtney tapped at her wrist for the umpteenth time and finally, Bridgette complied.

"All right, I've gotta go," she said, extricating herself from Geoff's grip and standing up once more. "It was nice seeing you two," she said, nodding at Duncan and DJ. She leaned in and gave Geoff a kiss—a real one this time—whispered something to him, and then ran across the lobby and out the door.

Courtney tugged her away and into the night almost immediately, but not before the brunette and Duncan shared a somber stare. Duncan fake saluted her and mouthed "See you tonight."

Courtney furrowed her brow but didn't outright glare and frankly, that was good enough for him.

* * *

The roof was cold. Courtney should have been expecting that after her previous near-death experience at the spot. The roof lacked the superficial temperature-control that heated the rest of Playa De Losers and the actual, cool Canadian temperature was refreshing and inviting during the long and falsely hot days.

It was, however, positively freezing at one in the morning.

Courtney pulled out her PDA with a slightly trembling hand and scowled at it. The device hardly got reception on Playa (coincidence? She thought not), but the time was perfectly clear. She'd been on the roof for two hours already, sitting near the entrance to the stairwell, invisible to any lunatic who might still be wandering the monitored pool deck, harboring a Hatchet-flavored deathwish. She'd been there for two hours, since the time Duncan had indicated, and was trying to process what her stubborn mind was not very willing to accept.

She'd been stood up. After his mangled Harold theatrics, his elevator shaft heroics, and agreeing to it through the lobby doors, after trying _nonstop_ to get on her good side since he'd shown up on the island, she'd asked him to do _one_ simple thing—something he was actually very good at and seemed to enjoy—and Duncan had _stood her up_.

Courtney growled at the note in her hands one more time. She'd handled it so many times in the last couple of hours that she'd actually rubbed the ketchup stain out of it.

She therapeutically shredded it and let the wind carry it away before standing up, still shivering, and stomping down the staircase.

Of course it was all a trick. Some dumb ploy to get back at her for something, a punishment she in no way deserved. Almost certainly.

As she trudged down the employee stairwell and back to her room, she felt more than just bitter: she felt cheated. Cheated that she'd let herself believe he might do a thing he'd said he would. And buried not too far under the cheated feeling was the entirely more dangerous, angry feeling—at Duncan for being Duncan, and at herself for thinking he'd be anyone else.

But clouding _all_ her previously mentioned feelings was the drag of exhaustion she'd naively thought she'd left behind her, on that eyesore of an island called Wawanakwa. So, as she walked down the girl's hallway, Courtney did what was necessary for a full night's sleep: she figuratively dug herself a neat, sturdy hole and buried any Duncan-stamped feelings in it. Then, accepting the rest that she'd been planning against only two hours ago and swearing an additional heaping of vengeance on the island's resident delinquent, she pulled out her roomkey and went inside.

Yet impossibly, for the second time in three days, she found her bed occupied by the last person she _ever_ wanted going near it.

"You go for a walk or something, Princess?" Duncan asked lazily, balancing pillows on the foot he had pointed at the ceiling. He was shirtless again.

"Where have you _been?_" she burst out before she could stop herself. Lowering her voice into a hiss as she not-so-quietly slammed the door behind her, she stalked to the side of her bed and looked down at him. "I was waiting for you on the roof for two hours!"

He blinked up at her, unphased by her ferocity. "The roof? What were you doing on the roof?"

She was halfway through automatically pulling the note out from her cardigan pocket when she remembered it was presently confetti in the wind.

"'Meet me at the place where you almost died'," she repeated to him by memory. She snatched her pillows off his Converse and made a mental note to find some sort of replacement pillowcase before the end of the evening. "As in, the _roof! _Where you almost _dropped_ me to my death! I'm sure you remember. It only happened less than _twenty four hours ago!_"

She held up the pillows as if to smack him, but Duncan had already rolled over to the far side of the bed, chuckling. "The roof, huh? Well, I was waiting by the pool deck, Peaches. The place where you _first_ almost died. I like ducking and rolling to avoid the cameras. Gives me a rush."

Courtney rolled her eyes. "How was I supposed to know you meant the pool?" she accused, dropping the soiled pillows onto the floor.

"I did say the _first_ place I accidentally almost killed you," he offered with a shrug, stretching casually where he stood. "_Speaking_ of having a bad memory."

Courtney couldn't tell if he was actively messing with her or if it was just late enough that Duncan was successfully convincing her of his unparalleled idiocy: that he'd forgotten to write down the single most important adjective that could have saved her two hours of disenchantment.

...Good grief, had she actually been _disappointed_?

"How did you get in here?" she barked.

"I have a key, babe. Your _casa_ is my _casa_. Or did you forget?"

(She had.)

Duncan yawned cheekily in a way only he could. "And you're welcome."

Courtney huffed. "For what?"

"For showing restraint and only using it when it was beneficial to both of us."

"And _how _is you sneaking into my room and dirtying my bed while I'm out waiting for you beneficial to either of us?"

"I blessed your bed with my manly scent," Duncan explained with a wink, gesturing to the sheets beneath him. "It'll give you sweet dreams."

"More like nightmares," Courtney muttered, eyeing her linens with pity. Resolutely, she strode over to her bed, grabbed the edge of the blanket Duncan was making linen angels on, and pulled.

"_Oof!_" The force of it sent Duncan sprawling off the side of the bed, and Courtney, more than pleased to have him off of her furniture, wrapped the blanket around herself to quell the shivers that were still racking her body at frequent intervals.

The blanket smelled all right.

Duncan coughed and stood up, eyeing her with a mixture of annoyance and admiration. "Now that wasn't necessary."

"Neither was stealing my room key," Courtney snapped, "but that didn't stop you."

"_No_," Duncan said, "because Chef _gave_ it to me in an attempt to make you hate me more than you already pretend to."

"Look who's pretending!" she shot back.

"I'm not pretending anything."

"Yes, you are! You're pretending this isn't your fault!"

Duncan bent an arm above his head, stretching his tricep. "Well if _you _weren't so busy pretending, you would have taken your room key back a long time ago."

Courtney furrowed her brows. She _should_ have taken her room key back a long time ago—she just hadn't gotten the opportunity! Of course, it could be said that this was her opportunity now, staring her in the face, but searching through Duncan's pockets was the _last_ thing she wanted to do with her night, and what were the chances that he would just give it to her anyway?

"Can I have my room key back, Duncan?" she asked, a bit half-heartedly.

"Not without a fight." He grinned.

Zero. The chances were zero.

"I expected as much." She sighed, gathering the blanket even tighter around her. "But to make it clear, I would love to punch you blind and take it by force. Unfortunately, this blanket doesn't have sleeves, and right now, staying warm is more important to me than causing you pain." Duncan's grin hadn't faltered. It was hard to look threatening in a big fluffy blanket. "So you can keep the room key for now, for you see, _that_ is how little you mean to me."

"I mean so little to you that I have permission to come into your room whenever I want?"

"_NO, _you mean so little to me that getting my key back isn't even worth the effort right now!"

Duncan continued to stretch, presumably to wake himself up from his chronic state of waiting. Pulling one arm perpendicularly to the rest of him, he glanced over his shoulder to crack his neck. "Well look at that, my sunburn's healing. About time."

Courtney couldn't have cared less. After the humiliation of her morning bathroom break with evil incarnate, the debacle in the elevator, a misinterpreted pantomime, and now the rollercoaster that was Duncan standing her up and then apparently not, Courtney felt tired enough to call the whole thing off, kick Duncan out (this step was very important), and go to sleep. It would have been the smart thing to do.

But then again… performing a criminal act with an infuriating criminal to find out more about his criminal past was a setup she would be hard-pressed to ever come across again. And if she really did want to do something about the convoluted feelings that sideswiped her more often than she was comfortable with, this was quite possibly her only shot.

Courtney groaned to herself. Right now, she had work to do. She could sleep when she was dead—probably because Chris had finally gotten her killed.

"Put on your shirt," she instructed, calmer now that her frustration over being stood up had transformed into the simpler frustration of being in the same room as Duncan. "We're going." She walked over and plugged in her PDA to charge, her blanket trailing behind her. "And this is the last time I find you shirtless in my room, or I'm sending you and whatever odor you exude to hell in a handbasket, got it?"

"Sure, sure, Princess. Not my fault this room's always hot." He grinned suggestively at her. "Must be its occupant."

Courtney threw a soiled pillow at him, but it was mostly for show.

* * *

For the majority of the roundabout trek to the prop room, which was mostly Duncan evading the cameras he'd previously identified and Courtney trying to mimic his stunts, Duncan alternated between humming to himself and trying to find the least conspicuous way to trick Courtney into telling him what her plan was.

"So, what is it you wanted from the prop room again?" he asked casually, checking the corridor outside the ballroom for the telling red light of a security camera.

"Duncan, I don't care how many times you ask me. I told you this is _need-to-know,_" she hissed at him, hiding in the same narrow shadow (which was not big enough for Courtney to maintain the distance she desired). "And if you don't quit with the Mission Impossible theme song, I'm going to throw you into the first motion sensor we come across."

"But see," he countered, giving her the sign for 'all clear' and speedily slinking down the hall, "if you did _that, _you'd never get into the prop room to get whatever it is you need. Which is…what?"

"You're as subtle as a monster truck," she said, sprinting to catch up with his slinking.

Duncan came up short just before jumping into the safety of the next shadow, causing Courtney to ungracefully run into his back.

"_Are _you looking for a monster truck?" he asked teasingly. He was fully aware that the hallway camera was about to swing their way again, but he was blocking their progress on purpose. All Courtney needed was the added pressure of being revealed to security and…

"Go, Duncan._ Duncan_, come on." He wasn't moving, but the sensor was and it was giving Courtney anxiety. "Duncan!"

"What are you looking for?"

"It's a camera!" she blurted quickly (it was the first thing that came to mind), knocking him into the shadow and hastily cramming herself in as well. But when she realized that her first instinct hadn't been a complete lie, she elaborated, "Camera Crony's camera from the first day you got here. That's what I'm looking for in the prop room. _Happy?_"

Instantly recalling that he had that very camera shoved in his duffel bag (which was safely stowed in his room), Duncan grinned to himself as he grabbed Courtney by the wrist and tugged her into a sprint, getting them around the darkened corner seconds before the camera rounded back on them.

The hallway they'd turned down had no windows and was, consequently, totally dark. This meant they were getting close to the prop room, but Duncan also knew they weren't going to find that camera or the footage in there. This meant they really didn't have anything to look for. Which meant, by Duncan's logic, that they really didn't need to goto the prop room at all.

"You know, babe," he started, not letting go of her wrist, both to keep track of her in the dark and because she had a very nice wrist, "there's no guarantee that your camera's going to be in there. Maybe we should stay here." He tried to convey his eyebrow waggle in the dark. "Just you and me. Alone. In the dark."

Courtney shuffled for something, and he was wondering if his advances had actually worked when…_CRACK!_ Out of nowhere, a green light was glowing between her teeth and her free hand.

It illuminated the annoyed look on her face pretty clearly.

"Oh, well would you look at that? It isn't dark anymore," she said primly, tugging her hand out of Duncan's wrist and heading down the hallway. "We're _still _going to the prop room because... I want to check for myself. Make sure it isn't there before I go looking elsewhere." That sounded logical, right? "I can't let that decontextualized footage get on the air."

Duncan considered telling her that he had the camera, and that the footage wasn't going _anywhere _so long as that was true. But since that was the only reason she was employing his help, he figured that telling the truth was equivalent to shooting his chance to spend time with Courtney in the foot. And he'd had his figurative feet shot at by enough people already—himself included—to know that it was not something he wanted to make into a habit.

"How'd you find out about Chris's secret prop room, anyway?" he asked instead, following the eerily glowing stick down the hall. From behind, he noticed that it illuminated the few strands of Courtney's hair that the wind had swept out of place.

She glanced over her shoulder and saw that Duncan, though striding casually behind her, was still keeping an eye out for any security cameras he might have missed. Courtney decided she better try to do the same.

"Some interns lead me to it while I was—" _selling your secrets for a pile of horsehair, "—_going to the bathroom this morning." She bit her lip at her hasty cover story and went on to avoid questions. "Though I guess those girls didn't really _lead _me here intentionally... But they were pretty hard to ignore."

Duncan chuckled behind her. It sounded much creepier in the dark and empty hallway than when he did it in any other situation. "I see you met the giraffe and the loudmouth."

Courtney turned onto a narrower stretch of hall and glanced over her shoulder again to Duncan. "Is that what you—?"

She didn't get to finish because suddenly, Duncan threw himself at her, pinning her to the wall. In surprise, she dropped the glowstick, which Duncan quickly stomped on with his foot, drowning the light. The tiny red light of a camera roved right over them and paused.

"Don't. Move," Courtney whispered, more to herself than anything, wanting nothing more than to get out from under Duncan.

"Took the words outta my mouth, Princess," he said through gritted teeth.

They stayed breathless for another few seconds before the camera continued on its arc. Duncan scooped up the glowstick from the ground and the two skittered into what was probably the camera's only blind spot: right beneath it.

When Courtney had caught her breath and tried to grab her glowstick back, he held it high out of her reach. "Sorry, babe, but you've lost glowstick privileges for the evening."

Before she could counter, the camera movement gave them their opening and Duncan bolted into the next hallway.

Courtney followed not very far behind, trying to pretend that adrenaline hadn't just been pumped into her system. And when she could kid herself no longer, she pretended it had nothing to do with Duncan: not his invasion of her personal space, or the way she could see his toned outline much better now that he was the one holding the glowstick.

When that failed, she pretended she didn't enjoy the feeling it gave her.

Duncan stopped halfway down the hall, much to Courtney's confusion.

"Is there another camera?" she asked, glancing around for red dots that meant either cameras or snipers. (Though the former were more likely, she wouldn't count out the latter as long as Chef was around.)

"Nope," he answered, holding up the glowstick to an unmarked door. "We're here."

"Finally." Courtney stepped towards the door, grateful for the distraction from her previous thoughts. She'd brought an array of pins and other key-like devices this time to try to get through the lock. "The sooner we get this done, the sooner I can get some rest tonight."

Courtney was on one knee, examining the lock in the poor light of the glowstick when Duncan placed a hand on her shoulder. She turned to glare up at him.

"Sorry. Hard to see," he answered, not looking sorry at all. "But really, Princess, why don't you leave the real criminal activity to the real criminal, huh?"

She stood up and stepped aside grudgingly as Duncan moved into her spot and then took a step back. She was only marginally satisfied when he handed her back her glowstick. "Well, good luck getting through that lock. I've only ever been able to—"

With the ease of a television actor (or someone who had done it many times before), Duncan kicked in the door completely. The breaking frame rang out with a _crack _that made Courtney jump, and she could only stare as Duncan caught the door on the rebound and held it open.

"Take notes," he said, winking, before stepping inside and leaving the door to swing shut again.

Courtney found her feet in time to lurch forward and catch it before she was locked outside a second time. "Duncan! That'll leave evidence! Did you think of that?!"

Duncan chuckled from the dark inside the door. "_You_ should've thought of that before you let the criminal do it!"

Courtney gripped the door and doorframe and fought to whisper-shout over  
her heart thudding loudly in her ears. "I thought you said you knew how to pick locks!"

Further into the black of the room, his voice sauntered back to her. "No, I _said _I knew how to break into places. You should've figured I like violence more than peaceful lockpicking. It makes breaking in faster."

She felt like she should have argued more. She should have had more reservations about Duncan beating down the door like a savage. But something was growing in Courtney now. Something she hadn't felt since the fish cabin, and that fateful run on Chef's refrigerator.

She wasn't the target of Duncan's ingenious but ultimately ridiculous scheme this time—she was a co-conspirator. This was on her head now, too. And with that realization, all her nervousness was replaced with Duncan's particular brand of reckless excitement.

It was...kind of exhilarating. In a totally crazy way.

"You still there, Princess? Generating my own light isn't on my lengthy list of capabilities."

Suddenly, Courtney found it very easy to release her grip on the door and its frame. "Then you're lucky I have enough light for two," she said, hearing more tease in her own voice than she had meant to be there.

In the dark, she heard the grin in Duncan's reply. "That's my girl."

Courtney stepped through the doorway and didn't bother correcting him. She _did_ hold the glowstick an arm's reach over her head, though, so that just in case he looked back, he wouldn't see her smile.

* * *

Do I sense... progress? No, it couldn't be.

**From strayphoenix**: What's this? Is Courtney actually having fun? Are you even reading the same fic as before? What's going to happen now that they're in the prop room but each for different reasons? What does the prop room have in store?

Most of these questions shall be answered soon! Next time on T! A! O! P! I! I! Y! F!

And I will give a shout out in my author's note to whoever can point out which two lines/sections in this chapter had me dying of laughter for a solid five minutes ;)

**From Contemperina**: Is it bad that I don't remember which two lines/sections had her dying of laughter? Oh wait, now I do. Is it worse that it took me nearly a minute to figure out that IIFY is the second half of this story's title? Oh dear.

I really enjoyed writing this chapter, particularly Geoff and DJ's game of voiceovers. I like to think that even though their phrasing is totally off, that _is _sort of how the conversation is going outside. But I suppose the world will never know what Courtney and Bridgette were really discussing...

Stick with us, because the next chapter is a doozy and it'll be out sooner than you think! And thank you so much to everyone who took the time to review the last chapter. It makes us so happy to know that you're sticking with us; you really can't imagine.

* * *

Thanks for reading! Please review (:


	25. Never methodize your mischief

**Rule 25: Never Methodize Your Mischief**

Summer's approaching quickly! What better way to celebrate than to welcome you all back to your favorite vacation destination: Playa de Losers.

If you'll recall, when we left Courtney, she'd pantomimed a plan with Duncan, which caused some minor confusion leading up to their prop room break-in. And now, we learn her fate...

* * *

The prop room was much larger on the inside than Courtney had imagined, and in great need of some industrial organization. The shelves, rather than being set up in aisles, were arranged into square columns, about two meters long on each side. The multiple columns seemed to make a grid in the space, and the ground in between them consisted of paths that were barely visible through the clutter of props on the floor.

Courtney stopped walking and let Duncan venture into the dark on his own, talking about whatever criminal thing was on his mind at the moment. More curious to see just how large the space was relative to the hallway, she threw her glowstick straight up in the air as far as she could to get a better sense of the room. In the seconds before it fell back to the ground, she spotted a balcony wrapped around the full perimeter of the room, about where the second floor might be. The columns themselves extended at least as high as the balcony, so high that they disappeared in the darkness Courtney's glowstick couldn't break.

She was so mesmerized that she hardly heard Duncan's grunt of pained surprise as the glowstick came down squarely on the top of his head. Unperturbed, she stared up at the columns with both hands firmly placed at her hips. As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she began to see little gleams and glimmers of shiny things on the shelves, reflecting the green spot of light. It gave her a better sense of how far up the shelves actually went. In fact, from where Courtney stood squinting at the ceiling, it looked like the room consumed all four stories of Playa. But that would be impossible, unless...

Courtney tried to place herself spatially within the resort. She mapped the turns of hallways they had taken and the trek down the employee staircases, but her projected placement of the prop room simply didn't correspond to Playa's exterior.

"Duncan, where are we?"

"The prop room," he grumbled, rubbing his head a little.

She rolled her eyes and grinned to herself. She should have expected that. "I meant on Playa. What does this look like from the outside?"

He shrugged. "I don't know. Why don't I throw the glowstick at _you_? Maybe that'll get the warehouse to reveal its secrets."

She ignored his suggestion and went on to herself. "I mean, unless I've made some egregious error, we're close to the north end of the island."

"If you _know _then why'd you ask?"

"The problem is, _Duncan,_" she said, enunciating the syllables of his name, "that there's no warehouse on this part of the island. There's _nothing _on the north end of the island except a dozen more camper rooms that look out over that filthy roped off beach for the interns."

Unless...

The wing was only meant to _look _like more camper rooms. There would never be enough contestants to fill all those rooms, Courtney realized. They weren't expecting anyone to stay at Playa beyond the twenty ex-campers that were already there, and they were all stationed on the other side of the island entirely.

"It's a façade!" she exclaimed suddenly, giddy at her revelation.

Duncan glanced at her curiously. "Huh?"

"The outside rooms!" she clarified, turning wildly. "There aren't any camper rooms on this side of the island. It's a disguise to hide the fact that this place even _exists_. Probably to keep it out of the hands of mischievous contestants like you," she snickered.

Duncan tossed the glowstick at her and she fumbled to catch it, unprepared.

"You mean contestants like _us,_" he answered cheekily, turning to continue down the dark aisle in search of the light switch. Granted, he knew exactly where the light switch was and how to get to it from his last visit, but he wasn't going to tell Courtney that. Who knew what would happen? Especially since Princess was always more fun in dark, enclosed spaces. Like prop rooms. Or fish cabins.

Wanting to confirm her theory regarding the discrepancy between the warehouse's interior and exterior, Courtney took a left down the closest aisle. "This way. If I'm right—which I am—the north wall should be half a dozens meters in this direction."

About face-ing to follow the light (and Courtney), Duncan sprinted to catch up. Going for casual, he commented, "Well, I was going to take you straight to the camera section so you could get out of here and sleep, but I appreciate the scenic route as much as the next guy."

The thought of her so-called reason for being there, and the fact that Duncan had accepted it so easily, twisted her stomach. She thought fast. "And how do you know where the camera section is?"

"I was hoping to get Heather's reaction to my master revenge scheme on film, so future generations could enjoy it with a bowl of popcorn." He shrugged. "But I had my hands full with the boombox and the chainsaw, and Geoff didn't know how to work—"

The glowstick drew an electric lightning arc in the air as Courtney wheeled around to face him. "Ha! I knew it! I _knew _he was in on it!"

Duncan felt his ego bruise at her vehemence. "Well, he only helped _a little_," he clarified. "I thought of it and did most of the work. He just helped with the heavy lifting."

In the light of the glowstick held between them, Courtney didn't look convinced. "So what you're saying is there were things that were too heavy for you," she said with a knowing grin.

Duncan tried to duck out from under her triumphant gaze and found himself bumping noisily into a shelf. Distracted, he and Courtney looked up and saw that they were standing in front of a large, square column of shelving filled with what looked like crates upon crates of fake animatronic ducks. Their beady glass eyes lit up with the reflection of the green glowstick and stared down at them like millions of tiny lightning bugs.

He smirked to cover up his mental stumble—Courtney had turned the tables on him in record time—and looked back at her, only to find her a few centimeters closer than she'd been before. The feeble glowstick she held against her chest illuminated both their faces, but Duncan gave it no credit for the electricity between them in that moment.

Brown eyes met blue, and several seconds passed in silence before Courtney was able to look away.

"I—_we_ should...try to find the lights," she said plainly, stepping back from him and returning to the path she'd been on.

Duncan cursed under his breath and, after a second of deep breathing, turned to follow her at a slightly slower pace.

He'd waited seven weeks and five days for Courtney's proclamation of love (though at that moment, he'd be willing to accept a statement of non-disgust and mild attraction in its stead) and if Courtney's reaction just now meant anything, it meant that he hadn't been exaggerating too much in telling Geoff and DJ that she was right where he wanted her. She was _almost_ there. He could feel it.

"What the—? Oh, you've _got _to be kidding. Duncan! Come see this!"

Duncan blinked at her sudden change of tone and realized he'd lost track of her in his own thoughts. Fortunately, finding the glowstick in the darkness wasn't very difficult, and he followed its glow right to Courtney.

"What up?" he asked nonchalantly, knocking down a couple of buckets in the process of jogging into her aisle.

"Look at this," Courtney hissed, holding up her glowstick to the display in front of her, gauging for Duncan's reaction.

He squinted, but his expression remained unaffected. "Princess, I can't see anything in this puny glow."

"Are you kidding me?" Courtney groaned, disappointed that he couldn't fully appreciate the array of state-of-the-art camping gear in front of her and the fact that Chris had made them sleep out in the rain instead. "This thing was fine three seconds ago!" She shook the glowstick. On top of it failing to get any brighter, a thin trail of fluorescent liquid ran down her hand.

"Uck!" She rubbed her hand on a purple plaid fedora sitting on the shelf next to her. "I think it broke when it connected with your _thick_ _skull_."

"Ha ha. Give it here." Duncan snatched the stick from her and, putting it in his fists, went to work on cracking each individual centimeter. "It's probably just dying out."

"What are you doing?!" Courtney shouted, grabbing one of his arms.

He kept cracking, unaffected by her grip (and, in fact, quite enjoying it). "I'm making it brighter. _Duh._"

On the 'duh', Duncan cracked the glowstick in two, right down the middle, splattering them both in glowing liquid.

"Uh... Whoops," he said in non-apology as Courtney let go of him and immediately set about trying to get the liquid as far away from her eyes as quickly as possible.

"Nice going, Duncan!" she snapped, scrubbing vigorously at her face with her (sort of unstained) shoulders.

"Well, you know this only means one thing, right?"

"We're both a year closer to deat—?"

"Glow-in-the-dark paint war!" Duncan shouted, flicking a splatter of the liquid at Courtney. She squealed and jumped away.

"Duncan, no!" Courtney said, smacking the two halves of the glowstick out of his grip and onto the floor, still trying to rub the stuff out of her pores. "That solution is toxic! We shouldn't be putting it anywhere near our faces!"

"Oh," Duncan said, nonplussed. "Well, when you put it like that..." He lowered his dripping hands.

"_Thank _you," Courtney sighed, watching as the liquid slowly drained from the cracked glowstick halves and onto the floor.

"PSYCH!" Duncan shook out like a dog, splattering toxic substance all over Courtney, who in turn shouted, "_Duncan! You sonova_—!" and ran.

Not needing any more incentive, Duncan chased after her, flicking drops of phosphorescence at her back. They were madly hopping over bicycles and crates and tents and tires in what would have been an impressive display of agility to any outsider. By the time he actually got within grabbing distance of her, though, the liquid had mostly dried into their skin and clothes, and there wasn't much left to flick at all.

Courtney very maturely stuck her tongue out at him, but his gaze was on the floor.

In the now-full darkness, it looked like the Milky Way had been spilled on the ground beneath them. "Wow," she whispered, still catching her breath from their impromptu obstacle course run. "We could've made tons of money in the art world if we'd done this on purpose."

"Now she tells me," Duncan snickered, coming to stand beside her to see the floor from her angle. "I could have given up my life of crime years ago."

It took the pair a while to reorient themselves in the encompassing dark and find their way back to the sophisticated camping equipment shelves (which Duncan did agree were majorly unfair). The glow was starting to fade from their clothes, and though their now-adjusted eyes did count for something, they needed to find the lights before they were left completely blind.

Fortunately, the north wall was exactly where Courtney had predicted it would be, and a big industrial switch was mounted on it, just a few paces to the left of where her aisle ended.

"Why didn't you mention the lights were this way all along?" she snapped at Duncan as she stalked over to the switch and attempted to throw it.

"Because that wasn't the light switch I used," he answered lightly, walking over and helping her pull it down while secretly hoping it was actually a trap door to a pit of alligators, or at least something cooler than a regular light switch.

His hopes were half granted, for while the light switch did operate mere lights, the effect was not at all what either of them had envisioned.

The big industrial switch on the wall, rather than turning on giant fluorescent overhead bulbs, was hooked up to what seemed like miles and miles of holiday lights, rainbow and white, blinking and not, large and small. They snaked around the borders of the room and were hanging in thick clusters, like waterfalls of light, down the centers of the apparently hollow shelves. The light backlit the individual shelves from within, making it clearer what each contained. It took the room, in all its metal and concrete glory, and softened it substantially.

"Well... This seems counterintuitive," Courtney commented, pressing her lips together.

"Shut up, you think it's pretty."

Courtney analyzed the web of lights and wondered if they could possibly be more cost effective than industrial lighting. They were more... intimate, surely. But economical?

"For a glorified _storage closet, _maybe," she allowed. She left Duncan to his own devices and poked her head between two of the shelves nearest her to inspect the lighting arrangement at its center. A few seconds later, a yo-yo wobbled off its shelf and fell on the back of her neck. She started and almost whacked her head on the mesh shelf above.

"A closet with _no_ organizational scheme to speak of," she grumbled. "There's absolutely no discernable pattern as to how things are shelved."

"Babe, heads up!"

Courtney spun around until she spotted Duncan on one of the light-ringed balconies (it turned out there were three in total) surrounding the room—one corresponding to each floor of the real resort. Duncan was on the first balcony, the second floor, leaning over the railing with a couple decks of cards in his hand.

"Make it rain!" he shouted, bouncing back and forth and dealing the cards off the edge one by one so they fell in a shower around her.

She covered her head instinctively, but she couldn't help but laugh a little after a moment as the cards floated down harmlessly. She spun around a bit in the cloud, and once the decks were out, she looked back up at him and asked, "How did you get up there so fast?"

"Ladder." He pointed several meters to his left, where a metal ladder extended up all four levels via small cutouts in each balcony floor. "Come check out the view! It's pretty sick."

Courtney sprinted over to the ladder's base and mounted it quickly. Walking over to where Duncan still stood, she peered over the edge and couldn't hide the look of awe on her face.

"I know." Duncan leaned over, resting his arms on the railing in front of them. "Cool, right?"

"Yeah..." Courtney gazed at the space in front of her. It was bigger than she had imagined, even after wandering around it for the past half hour or so. From there she could ascertain that the cascades of Christmas lights and the columns of shelves encasing them did extend all the way to the ceiling, although she still had no idea how the props were sorted onto them, or if there was any reason to it at all.

"But I don't see the logic behind anything being _anywhere_," she muttered aloud. "The organization, if you could even _call _it that, doesn't make any sense."

Duncan jerked back to look at her. "Wait, you don't see it?"

Courtney furrowed her brows. "See what?"

Duncan stared at her for a second before he started laughing, so hard that he slid down to the metal grate floor of the balcony. "Oh, this is too great," he said, wiping an imaginary tear from his eye. "You really don't see it."

"See _what_, Duncan?" Courtney demanded. "It's just a bunch of props on a bunch of columns!"

Duncan kept chuckling, so Courtney turned and resolutely stared out at the columns again. They weren't arranged in alphabetical order, or by utility, size, or function. A slough of canoes was lying next to an arrangement of paint guns, women's underwear, and multicolored logs of wood, for goodness sake!

"Let's keep looking for your camera," Duncan said, still chuckling as he stood up and headed for the ladder.

"Wait, Duncan, no!" she called, rushing after him. "_Tell me!_"

He grabbed the outer frame of the ladder and slid straight down to the floor, like he'd done it a dozen times before. Courtney tried to shake the sudden thoughts of the many Juvy-worthy, criminal escapades that ended in exactly that kind of getaway.

"It'll be more rewarding if you figure it out yourself!" Duncan called gleefully, disappearing past a shelf that started with camping gear and morphed into electrical doodads and then into animal-shaped containers.

"Fine," Courtney muttered, gripping the ladder and, in an attempt to show him up, slid down as Duncan had (with only a few minor pauses on the way down as to not pick up too much speed). She'd figure it out without him. And the sooner she did, the sooner she could get to the hair section and...

Courtney hit the ground a little less than gracefully and cursed her preoccupation under her breath. All she needed was a sprained ankle to replace the sprained wrist that was finally healing up.

"You'd better be walking in the direction of the cameras now that we can see where we're going!" she called, half-threatening as she tried to see which way he'd gone past the doodad and container column.

Courtney turned a corner and screamed.

"Princess?" Duncan hollered from somewhere across the grid. "You okay?"

She couldn't respond. She scrambled back so fast she tripped over a bowl and landed flat on her back, the wind knocked out of her.

Towering above her was Chef's massive figure.

They'd been caught! He'd found them! But how? He was away—Duncan had said so! And they'd avoided all the cameras... No one knew they were there! And yet there he was: Chef, standing above her.

Being completely silent. And... not moving at all.

Courtney choked down a panting breath and shifted a little to the side.

And in 2D.

She'd walked into the standee section by accident and had been caught entirely off guard. God, those things looked realistic, especially in the ambient lighting. And there were a _ton_ of them! Chef was the most prominent, out in front, but as she shakily sat up she saw Chris behind him, smirking, and what looked like each and every one of the campers, famous celebrities, even people she didn't recognize, all arranged in a clump, a few tipped onto the others or lying facedown on the ground.

"Courtney!_" _Duncan shouted, finally skidding around to where she was and practically doing a baseball slide to the ground where she still sat. He grabbed her by the shoulders. "What's wrong?!"

"Nothing," she replied sharply, fending off his attempts to help her stand. His concern was touching, but she wasn't looking forward to explaining that it was unwarranted—that she'd been duped into confusing a standee of Chef with the real thing. And even worse, she _really_ didn't want to explain to the seasoned criminal exactly how much fear had struck her core at the thought of being apprehended. "I'm fine, I just... I tripped over something."

Duncan narrowed his eyes at her and, giving up on helping her stand, went from looking at her to what was around her. Finally, his eyes settled on the standee collection in front of her and his look of concern shifted into one of pure mischief.

"You thought Chef's standee was real," he said. It wasn't a question.

"_NO_," Courtney spat back, quickly getting to her feet and searching around for a less humiliating excuse. "I... I saw the standee of you and the monstrousness of it was just too much for me to bear."

His expression didn't falter. "Bull! Admit it—the standee freaked you out!"

Courtney said nothing. Her breathing was the only answer Duncan needed.

"It's okay, darling," he went on, attempting to slide an arm across Courtney's shoulders. "It looks really _real, _doesn't it?"

She smacked him away and Duncan chuckled, instead going to inspect the standees behind Chef.

"It's all good, babe. We all get scared sometimes." As if on cue, Duncan jumped slightly. At arm's length, he gingerly picked up the Celine Dion standee he'd just come face to face with, turned it around, and set it up on the shelf opposite the other standees before skittering away. "You stay over there," he instructed it firmly.

"Look who's talking," Courtney retorted, crossing her arms. "Like you have the best track record with standees."

"Touche," he admitted, the playfulness quickly returning to his eyes. "But I think there's at least one standee I could get along with."

Duncan smirked and, from the masses, plucked out none other than Courtney's own standee.

Her demeanor changed to one of pure horror as she imagined what might happen next. "Duncan, put me down," she said sternly.

"Just admit that standees are some of the scariest things on the planet and I will!" he replied. He was holding standee-Courtney around the waist, but something told the real girl it wouldn't stay that way for long.

She pursed her lips. "Duncan..."

Duncan removed one of his hands from her standee waist and laid it flat against her standee stomach. Looking right at the original across the sea of cardboard, he moved his hand higher, and higher...

"Duncan, I am warning you," Courtney growled.

And higher... and higher still...

Milliseconds before her standee self was irrevocably violated, Courtney darted through the standees and, without a second thought, tackled Duncan to the ground. "You are so _indecent_!" she shouted, trying to wrestle her likeness out of his hands with little success.

The scuffle on the ground was starting to disturb the standees around them, and suddenly, Duncan's grip slackened.

"HA!" Courtney snatched her standee from Duncan's hands and, looking around for the source of his distraction, came face to face with Celine Dion, who had fallen right into Duncan's face.

Courtney giggled freely. "Perfect timing, Celine." And then, when she saw that Duncan had kicked off the standee, stood, and yet was _not_ running for the hills, she turned to him with a smirk. "I'm almost impressed that you're not more terrified right now."

"You're the one that made me hug it," he said gruffly, not quite meeting her gaze. As he shoved his hands in his pockets and walked away from the pile of standees, disappearing among the columns, Courtney could have sworn she heard him say, "Nothing's ever as scary after you've hugged it."

It occurred to her that a super secret criminal escapade with Duncan was not the best place to be giggling quite so maniacally.

* * *

They split up, as per Courtney's suggestion, to "search the prop room more swiftly." She, of course, was hunting for Heather's future wig, while Duncan was on her wild-goose chase for the camera she didn't really need. (Actually, she did sort of need the camera as well... But the wig was a priority at present.) Meanwhile, unbeknownst to her, Duncan actually _was_ aware that he was on Courtney's wild-goose chase. He alone knew the camera's true whereabouts and was merely dicking around the warehouse and pretending to be useful to fill the time.

She hadn't heard from Duncan in a while though, unless you counted a suspiciously loud crash on the other side of the warehouse. It hadn't ended with screaming or cackling, so she surmised that Duncan had survived whatever it was. Besides, although the prop room was massive, they'd learned from the standee incident that if one shouted loudly enough, the other was usually pretty quick to materialize from somewhere in no time at all.

On a more disheartening note, after picking through shelf after shelf and even climbing the wrap-around ladders to get to the second and third story shelves of the columns, she was yet to find a single strand of hair, let alone an entire wig. Halfway up said library-style ladder, Courtney pulled out her PDA to check the time. It was getting later and later, though it _was_ a comfort that midnight was still closer than the dawn, if only ever so slightly. But still the fact remained, she wasn't going to get a chance to find the wig other than the time she had now. Nervousness was starting to set in.

Courtney was about to slide back down to the floor and call for Duncan when a muffled noise sounded out.

"...Duncan?" she asked, straining her ears.

"Po...lo!"

Duncan sounded hoarse, but Courtney couldn't quite decide if she should be worried or just chalk it up to all the shouting they'd been doing over the past couple hours.

"Mar...co?" she replied hesitantly.

"Polo!"

Yeah, he was definitely hoarse. She slid back to the floor (her sliding was improving tremendously from the amount of practice she was putting in) and walked in the direction of his voice. A few Polos later, after which Courtney resolved to inform Duncan that you did not simply start a game of Marco Polo with the Polo half, she found herself in the corner of the prop room, facing a situation that she should have found more surprising than she actually did.

Duncan was, somehow, suspended against a rectangular metal wall, bug-on-a-windshield style, at least three meters in the air. A Motocross bike lay trashed below him, and something resembling a metal and cardboard ramp was set up in front of it all.

She walked around to Duncan's right, because that was the way his head was turned and it didn't look like he could move it much from that position. That explained the hoarseness.

"Do I even want to know?" Courtney asked sarcastically.

"Two words," Duncan said, looking down at her with an obscene grin on his face. "Magnet wall."

"That's a thing?"

"Apparently!"

Courtney stared up at him disapprovingly. "And you called me over here because...?"

"Okay, funny story," Duncan started. It looked like he wanted to kick his legs around or something, but they were sturdily magnetized to the wall. "So at first I was messing around on the velcro wall—" At Courtney's raised brow, he jerked his head to the left. Sure enough, an inflatable wall covered in velcro stood exactly next to the magnet one. "And that was all right, but I kept falling off."

"That's the point, Duncan."

Duncan shushed her. "So I moved to the magnet wall, and that stuck better, but I wanted to get higher! So I got a bike and made a ramp out of Celine's corpse, and jumped from the bike and stuck myself to the wall."

Courtney looked over at the ramp again. Sure enough, the cardboard on top of the metal plate was all that remained of Miss Dion's former standee.

"You're completely insane," she said matter-of-factly.

"No," Duncan said. "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. I only did this once."

The surprises kept on coming. "Where did you hear that?"

"I know things, sweetheart."

"You have no idea what instrument Beethoven played but you can quote Albert Einstein's definition of insanity back to me? Be still my heart."

"I'm _all _about the stillness," Duncan answered dryly, indicating his inability to move his arms.

Courtney shook her head. "So if you're really going with the theory that you're not_, _in fact, crazy, then what seems to be the problem here?"

"Turns out I forgot that getting myself this high meant I couldn't rip myself down." He chuckled at some unknown joke—or maybe he just found his own stupidity that hilarious. "It's a kind of epic fail."

"I'll say..." Courtney looked from Duncan, to the ground, to the Velcro Wall, and back. Where the Velcro Wall had a safely padded, inflatable base, the Magnet Wall boasted nothing of the sort. Just the concrete floor. Maybe it was a prototype?

Courtney blinked up at him. He looked so assured of himself, even as he was helplessly suspended in the air. "Are you asking for my help?"

"Sure looks that way, doesn't it?" He didn't say it like an admission, though. There was still a happy glint in his eyes. "Just don't make me say please."

Courtney would have laughed if the whole thing weren't so mind-numbingly absurd. Fortunately, though most of her mental capacities were busy trying to convince the rest of her that yes, this was actually happening, her CIT instincts kicked in without further guidance.

"All right, Duncan, you stay there." The punk rolled his eyes, but Courtney was too busy planning to notice. "I'm going to find something to cushion your fall. I'll be right back."

Her first thought was to push the inflatable velcro wall under Duncan to use as an intended cushion. However, after a few failed attempts at moving the entire inflatable construct on her own (to snarky commentary from the magnetized peanut gallery), she gave up and went to search for a Plan B. She jogged up and down the aisles, around the columns, looking for anything that might work. She came across blankets, pillows, an ungodly amount of marshmallows that were undoubtedly stale, but never enough of anything to make a safe base.

Finally, though, she wandered past a column that, besides holding a tire swing and a deconstructed wooden jungle gym, was stationed near a large, circular trampoline that would work adequately, if not perfectly.

After carefully tipping it up on its side, she went about rolling it through the columns. It was no small feat—she was leaving a scene of wreckage in her wake—but it was infinitely easier than her attempts to move the velcro wall, and she eventually found her way back to Duncan and his preposterous scenario after only three wrong turns.

"Took you long enough," he teased as she set the trampoline back on its legs.

"Sorry," she replied, layering as much sarcasm onto the single word as she could manage. "_Some_ of us haven't yet managed to map this entire place out!"

"Still haven't figured out the pattern, I see," Duncan said, much too sagely given current circumstances.

Courtney huffed. "You're safe, jerk," she said, walking around to where he could see her. "Though I would recommend shimmying at least _a little _down the wall so it's not such a drastic fall."

"You worry too much, Princess," he said. Then, without even double checking on what was behind him, Duncan jerked hard to part both his hands from the wall, fell back until his legs released as well, and executed a single flip to fall back onto the trampoline in a perfect X. (Courtney couldn't even imagine what kind of skill that required.)

She walked back around to where he lay reverberating and glared down at him. "I'm not saving you again."

"You didn't save me," he replied. "The trampoline did." He tried to cross his arms behind his head as he smirked but found that the magnets attached to his wrists and ankles had stuck him to the metal ring of the trampoline.

As Duncan futilely tried to pry at least one limb loose, Courtney stood to the side, pinching her brow and biting her lip to keep herself from laughing at the absolute misfortune of it all. "Yes, and I think she's experiencing some separation anxiety."

Duncan shot her his suavest look. "Don't they all?"

"It must be such a huge problem for you."

"It's the price I pay for my sparkling personality and dashing good looks."

Courtney snorted. "Keep that up and the trampoline's never letting you go."

Duncan smiled brightly at her then. It caught her a little off guard, how genuinely happy he looked to find that they had been on the same wavelength.

"I'll give her another second. But, uh...could you get me something I could use to save _myself _with later?"

Courtney was shaking in silent laughter by this point. "Only if you say please."

* * *

She left Duncan with a couple escape options (in the form of a fishing rod, baseball bat, and crowbar) and the instructions to "holler if Houdini needs any more assistance in saving himself." That left her to stroll around idly, flipping through the pages of a book she'd come across over on the same column as Duncan's decks of cards. But as she rounded another corner, she came to a sudden stop.

In front of her, on styrofoam heads as far up the shelves as she could see, were wigs. Every style, every color, every length. Pinks and browns and rainbows, Rapunzel length to pixie cut.

Reality came crashing back to her. She had to deliver one of those to Heather. She had to sell Duncan out, as great as their time together had been. She had to or she'd...

Or _what_, actually? She hadn't put anything on the line except for her reputation in Heather'seyes, which counted about as much as mud now. What did she care what Heather thought of her, or what rumors she might spread? No one would believe her if she did.

Courtney didn't have anything to lose by turning around right then and there and resuming her book and her supposed camera hunt with Duncan. All she was staring at was a wall of wigs that held the answer to the one question Duncan was never going to answer for her. That was all...

From only a few columns away, she heard Duncan calling, "Oh Priiincesss!"

Courtney steeled her nerves. She wanted this. She'd wanted it for a long time now. A few hours of goofing off in the dark of night wasn't going to get him to answer the unaskable question, no matter how much she feebly hoped it might.

She glanced quickly over the entire wall and, seeing the pair of mullet wigs Lindsay and Sadie had used for the Phobia Factor challenge within grabbing distance, rapidly snatched up both. She could hear Duncan rounding the corner and pulled something that resembled a bag out of a pile on the ground before shoving both inside.

Duncan let out a long whistle as he came up behind her, his steps tapering off into a steady walk. Courtney did her best to act natural, though her heart was drumming loudly in her ears.

"Sheesh. How many muppets did Chris have to kill to get these?" he joked, holding up a styrofoam head with a neon purple bob.

"They're probably for Chef," Courtney said, trying to hide the bag behind her. "You know, one per humiliating outfit."

Duncan grabbed a short, dark haired surfer-style mop top and flattened his Mohawk to make it sit.

"Guess who I am." Duncan cleared his throat, and in a terrible impression of a surfer's accent, said, "Welcome to Trillionaire Douchebag Island! Where you will have your butt mauled on a regular basis by wildlife, your competitors, and myself, but you _might_ win a hundred thousand dollars, so it's worth it! What we _don't_ tell you is that you'll have to spend it all on therapy after seeing my boyfriend in drag!"

Courtney laughed despite herself. She laughed so hard she started hiccupping, and that only made her laugh harder.

Duncan grinned proudly as he took the wig off. Getting Courtney to laugh normally was an achievement in and of itself; this was like winning the Nobel Peace Prize for Hilarity.

He pointed at the bag that was no longer hidden discretely. "Hey, what's that?"

Courtney had completely forgotten she was holding it. "Oh, um," she thought quickly, sobering herself and trying to contain her hiccups. "It's a...designer bag. Louis Vuitton! Very rare. Not worth a hundred grand, you know, but..." She hiccuped again. "Pretty close."

Duncan crossed his arms, still grinning. "Anyone ever tell you that you hiccup like a puppy?"

She leaned over, trying to control her diaphragm spasms. "Anyone ever tell you that you're a prehistoric"—hiccup—"ignoramus?"

"Only you, babe," he admitted proudly. "Only you."

Straightening up and adjusting her bag, only after she was sure her puppy hiccups had subsided, she said, "We're not going to find the camera in this arbitrary mess."

"You're right," Duncan said, grinning as he strode off. "Unless I un-arbitrize it for you."

"Will you?" Courtney couldn't help herself. She was even willing to look past the bastardization of the word arbitrary if it meant she could understand the puzzle. She already had what she'd needed to find, but not knowing had been eating at her all night.

"Yeah, come on." Duncan took off running back in the direction he had come from, beckoning to her over his shoulder. Courtney followed suit, clutching her definitely _not_ Louis Vuitton bag close to her side.

He made his way back to the ladder and started climbing, all the way up to the fourth floor balcony, practically on the ceiling. Courtney had to stop at the third tier landing to catch her breath; climbing four stories' worth of ring ladder wasn't for the feint of heart.

When she finally reached the topmost level, she found Duncan holding an abstract painting at arm's length, angling it this way and that, probably trying to decipher it.

"All right," she said, steadying herself on the railing and trying not to let the height of the balcony get to her as she observed the sea of glowing columns.

Duncan put the painting down and came over to where she stood perched over the rail.

"Okay, so see," Duncan said, pointing to the base of one of the columns on their left. "That's dodgeball. Then the talent show..." He pointed to the column behind that one and then moved to the one behind it. "The camping episode... It goes on from there." He snaked his finger across the grid in a squiggle.

"Are you serious?" Courtney felt, to be honest, a little dense. It looked so obvious from up above. Each of the columns was an episode! The props used in each challenge, things she'd handled herself, plus the items that Chris and Chef and whoever else had access to this place must have thought were similar. All together, they formed a five by five grid in the space. She and Duncan were oriented incorrectly, but if they just walked around one wall to the right, the episodes were set up in order: left to right, top to bottom, like reading a book.

"But there'll only be twenty-two episodes in total. There are three extra columns on this grid."

"Two of them look like backup episodes," Duncan said, shifting closer to Courtney so she could follow the line of his arm to where he was pointing. "They've got stuff on them I've never seen before. Hollywood sets and flags of the world and crap." He made a gagging noise. "The other column is dedicated solely to Chef's outfits."

"Where do they keep all the filming equipment?" she asked.

"Gee, no need to beat around the bush, Princess," Duncan joked. He pointed at eye-level to the closest column. "They're on every column, the camera models and microphones and junk they used in that episode," Duncan explained. "Up here on the highest shelves."

"Seriously?" Courtney huffed. "Then where's all the footage they've been taking of Playa?"

_In my duffel bag, _Duncan thought, fighting to quell a strange combination of laughter and guilt. He struggled to sound serious as he said, "Beats me, Princess. I checked some of the cameras before I found the magnet wall. They were all empty."

Courtney gripped her bag subconsciously. "Great. Then this whole trip was a waste of time."

"Not a _total _waste," Duncan argued. "At least you got to see this place for yourself! What they keep here, its pattern. All thanks to your tour guide's expertise." He took a small bow.

"If by pattern you mean designless disarray and by expertise you mean perchance luck," she retorted. Which made it all the more astonishing that he'd found the organization so easily... "How did you figure this out anyway?" she asked. "I wouldn't have seen it in a million years."

Duncan shrugged, and the way they were leaning against the rail, Courtney felt his shoulder move against her own. "It kind of popped out at me. The idea of it, I guess. Just saw it."

Duncan's explanation wasn't overly specific, sheepish even, but she still understood what he was saying. When he looked at the columns, he saw the big picture: the episodes, everything they'd lived through. She looked at the columns and saw the details, books and wigs and standees and miscelanea that didn't mean anything to her. But now that she saw the big picture too...

It was amazing that she could look off this balcony so fondly at the things she thought she hated so much. There were the tents and maps and compasses they used in the outdoor episode. Back when she and Duncan hardly knew each other at all.

She shivered at the memory of the rain and the cold, and Duncan must have felt the tremor—out of the corner of her eye, she saw him look at her curiously. She didn't return his gaze, and he eventually looked back out at the twinkling sea of props.

Behind the camping gear were the standees and, she could see now, nearly everyone else's fears, including a now-empty pool of what had once been filled with... She shuddered again, but Duncan either didn't notice or ignored it.

She looked out at the paint guns and deer antlers, the arrow she'd worn on her head during the trust challenge and the trapeze that had, at one point, been positioned over a pool of jellyfish whose tanks lay empty nearby.

But when she finally laid eyes on all the props from her final episode—the full column in its entirety—she couldn't help but swallow. Tire swings, barbed wire, wooden walls... everything that had been on the obstacle course, broken down and stored away. It made her sad for some reason, to see it lying there.

And then there were all the memories that couldn't be represented by mere props. The army-grade gruel, the fish cabin, Chef's fridge, the sandwiches, their kiss...

Courtney was suddenly hyper-aware of Duncan's arm against her own and flinched away.

He straightened in surprise. "Something wrong?" he asked, a little too sincerely even for his own taste. Hastily, he added, "Did you spot Chef's standee again from all the way up here?"

"Shut up," she muttered.

Duncan figured it would be best to change the topic. "So, uh, why do you think this mess is up here?" he asked after a moment, turning his back to the room to examine the contents of the fourth-floor balcony, which was covered even more heavily than the other two. Specifically, he was staring into an open-fronted case of silver and golden trophies, which the painting from before was leaning against.

Glad for the change of conversation, Courtney sniffed and looked back, surveying the balcony. The bag on her shoulder suddenly felt hot. "Who knows? This is probably everything that couldn't be sorted into an episode."

"Doubt it. That stuff's in the aisles." Duncan turned to her with renewed energy. "Hey, want to see a trick, Princess?" He reached into the trophy case as Courtney glanced down at her bag, preoccupied, and waved at him in a way that could have meant yes or no.

She wasn't paying any attention, still trying to talk herself into or out of carrying out her deal with Heather, when she heard a clinking noise from somewhere behind her. She glanced over her shoulder, expecting to find that Duncan had dropped one of the trophies. Instead, she found the trophies untouched.

And Duncan nowhere to be seen.

* * *

The magical mystery prop room is waiting to take you away!...

**From strayphoenix: **I do love me some Beatles references. :3 But yes! Welcome to Playa! Where the architecture is made up and the props don't matter!

Finally! Courtney has her hair for Heather! Is she really going to betray Duncan after their bonding time together? Or will Duncan manage to change her mind without knowing her mind needs changing? Speaking of, uh, where did our certain punk GO anyway?

Stay tuned to the most fun in the sun you can get this summer without leaving your computer!

This chapter took some influence from an 'old' movie called _Big Fat Liar_ and if you've ever seen it, the connection should be apparent. _Wink wink._

A special Kudos to **DramaRose13 **and **CarmillaD** for guessing which scenes/lines had me on the floor laughing last chapter! There were quite a few of those moments in this chapter as well as Rina and I had a blast with the array of props at our disposal. Let us know what your favorites were!

And for the record, Rina is the _best _for mapping out and writing the bulk of this chapter. Rina and I have had this chapter in the works for a long time but it was as chaotic and unorganized to me as the prop room was to Courtney until Rina got her hands on it. Rina is da bomb dot com. All the other slim shadys, please sit down. ;)

**From Contemperina: **Aw, she flatters me! I would tell you all that stray was the one who took the mess of ideas bumping around in my head and turned them into an actual, cohesive chapter, but that's just more flattery back and forth, and that's what email's for, amiright?

Did anyone manage to figure out the prop room's arrangement before Courtney had it explained to her? And what about Courtney's panic attack after seeing Chef? Did anyone see that coming?

Apologies to you all for the wait between chapters, and many thanks to each and every reader who continues to keep up with Playa's adventures—while raining excessive thanks upon those who reached out to us over the break! We're writing for you all, and now that summer's here, we have even more time to dedicate to the shenanigans. I can't wait until you all see where Duncan's gone off to!

* * *

Thanks for reading! Please review (:


	26. Never be afraid

Thank you so much for your continuing support, everybody! We're particularly proud of the chapter you are about to read, and we hope you'll agree that it has been well worth the wait.

If you'll recall, when we left Courtney, she'd broken into the prop room with Duncan and located a wig for Heather, only to find that Duncan had suddenly disappeared. (dun dun dunnnnn)

* * *

**Rule 26: Never be afraid**

Suddenly alone, Courtney found herself staring at the spot her companion had been occupying less than twenty seconds ago.

"Duncan?" she called loudly.

She glanced around. The balcony didn't leave many places to hide, save a pile of sports equipment off to the side that _might_ have been big and close enough to hide him without her noticing...if she were deaf and hadn't heard the ruckus of him diving into such a pile.

"Marco?" she tried. No response. "Duncan, this isn't funny!" she said, louder than before.

Now on high alert, she scanned the rest of the wraparound balcony. In the clutter, it felt like she had entered a real-life game of _Where's Waldo?_, but with much higher stakes. She was suddenly very freaked out by how alone she was in the huge echoing warehouse and really hoped her green-Mohawked guide hadn't tripped like a moron and fallen over the rail to the ground, three floors down.

Courtney cautiously walked and stood over the hole in the floor that served as an opening for the ladder. She peered down the chute and gulped at the drop. Assuming he hadn't already fallen to his death, there was still _no_ way he could have slid down three flights to the floor so quickly without breaking his legs or spine, no matter how fit or practiced he was.

A hand touched her shoulder from behind and she nearly fell down the chute herself.

"Whoa! Calm down, Princess," Duncan chuckled, gripping her upper arm to steady her. "I was only gone for a minute."

She snatched her arm from his grasp and used it to punch him in the shoulder the moment she regained her balance. "You scared the crap out of me! What kind of trick was that?!"

Despite having been hit in the shoulder rather viciously, Duncan looked extremely excited. "Trick? Oh, forget that!" he said, waving dismissively. "I was going to juggle trophies, but what I found was WAY cooler."

He jogged back over to the trophy case with Courtney trailing warily behind. "Check this out!" Without a second thought, he tipped one of the larger gold trophies forward.

The bookcase clicked and swiveled and, very much in the vein of a James Bond movie, swung itself, a semicircle of the floor, and Duncan into some unknown place.

Courtney gaped at the identical trophy case that had been left in its wake. Looking to the floor, she only had time to notice that she'd nearly been swung around herself before another click brought the bookcase, the floor, and Duncan back to where they had been.

"Ta-dah!" Duncan announced with some jazz hands.

The combination of the hidden door and Duncan's theatrics left her slack-jawed. "All right, I'll concede—that was pretty cool."

"That's not even the best part!" Duncan said giddily, grabbing her by the waist and tucking her up next to him, too eager to acknowledge Courtney's visible displeasure. "Check out what's on the other side!"

He pulled the trophy again, and Courtney's complaint about their proximity (and his sudden enthusiasm) was made moot—his grip was all that kept her from being whipped away by the unexpected centrifugal force. But when the motion stopped and Courtney's eyes adjusted to the new, dimmer place, her jaw dropped.

"Better than juggling, right?" Duncan asked, grinning from ear to ear.

"No way," she breathed, taking stock of her new surroundings. It only took a moment to recognize the room, and she understood Duncan's excitement instantly.

They were standing in Chris's penthouse.

* * *

"SOMEONE'S IN MY PENTHOUSE."

Chris McLean shot up forcefully from his sleeping position, leagues away on a silk cot in the craft services tent, deep in the forests of Wawanakwa.

"Not this again..." Chef groaned, rolling over in the extra-extra-long cot to the right.

"I'm serious, Chef!" the host declared, throwing his covers off and finding his slippers in the dark. "I can _feel_ it!"

"Go back to sleep, you big baby," Chef grumbled, hiding his head under the pillow as Chris yanked on the chain to the Tiffany bedside lamp. (The crystal chandelier hanging in the tent would have been much too bright for him in that state.) "You cry wolf about your dang penthouse three times a week. Waking me up when ya know good and well I don't get to sleep anyway..."

Chris motored right over this. "It was _different_ this time," he insisted, pacing frantically and wringing his hands. "I felt it at the core of my being, man! My soul cried out in agony!" He grabbed his designer night robe and straightened up to announce, "I'm going to check the cameras."

"Let me get this straight," Hatchet started, sitting up slowly to glare at his boss. "You're gonna go take a solo walk through the dark woods, full of _all_ manner of critters that'll happily eat your skinny ass alive, a few hours before dawn on the day we're expecting a shipment of props to set up the most _finely_ catered, unnecessarily convoluted, and most gosh dang complicated television finale of your entire career?"

Chris paused at the flap to the tent, one foot already on the grass outside, and let out a shaky laugh. "You know what, Chef?" he said, as if the idea had just come to him. "I'm probably imagining it."

"No kidding," Chef growled, lying back down.

"Nervous jitters, am I right?" he went on, retreating back inside. "All celebrities have them leading up to the biggest milestones in their careers."

"Uh-huh."

"I mean," he continued, regaining his composure as he shut off the lamp and removed his night robe, "for someone to have gotten into my penthouse without setting off the alarm system, they would have had to find my secret trophy in the secret bookcase in the secret prop room, whose entrance is hidden in a secret part of Playa!"

"Yup."

"And really, who has _that much _dumb luck?" Chris chuckled.

Chef sat back up and barked, "Are you gonna shut your pie hole, or am I feedin' the bears tonight after all?"

"All right, all right, sheesh!" Chris wrapped himself back up in his silk sheets and settled into the cot for the second time that night. "Sue me for living."

* * *

"I am going to sue the everloving pants off that man!" Courtney declared, inspecting the undershelf of the spinning bookcase. "_This _thing has a safety certification, but the camper elevator in the lobby doesn't!?"

"We're in Chris McLean's penthouse, and you're obsessing over the _bookshelf_?" Duncan jeered from where he was busy wandering through the runway-length, walk-in closet on the far side of the room. "Where's your _curiosity?_ You should see some of the stuff Chris has in here!" He was so deep in the closet that his voice was starting to come back muffled. "And we thought he gave us a crap ton of laundry. I hate to say it, but if _this_ is all his stuff, then he was going easy on us. "

Courtney frowned in the direction of Duncan's voice, then frowned at the room in general. It was lit by a chandelier hanging down from the middle of the high-arched ceiling, numerous art gallery-style overhead lights, and two bronze lamps that sat on bedside tables, which had switched on the second Duncan bolted across the room to the closet. The lamps flanked the only piece of furniture in the room: a king-sized, ornately carved four-poster bed that sat in the room's center, surrounded by lace curtains.

Occupying the entirety of the wall opposite was a carved mantelpiece that housed a large flat screen TV, and the room boasted corresponding surround sound speakers. Just beside the closet from which Duncan's voice was emanating was another door, and even though it was closed, Courtney remembered from her laundry visit that it opened to a bathroom and hot tub. The remaining wallspace was tightly packed with trophy cases (Courtney had a sudden fleeting curiosity as to how many of those cases were _also _secret doors) and numerous portraits of Chris, with occasional windows, wider and higher than the tallest bookcase.

She was still miffed about the safety certification issue, but Duncan's increasing levels of delight were indeed making her curious as to what remained to be seen.

Courtney ambled over in the direction of the closet Duncan was seemingly buried within. It was quite a bit of ambling, she noted, as Chris's room was _huge._ She hadn't been able to see from inside the elevator, but with the exception of the warehouse they'd just discovered, she guessed the room took up the entirety of Playa's fourth floor. And Playa was quite expansive.

As she crossed the room, she glanced at the elevator from which they'd viewed the penthouse on laundry day—or where it should have been. She was stumped to find that there _was_ no elevator to be seen. Just another trophy case.

After a moment of consideration, she took a detour to the trophy case in question, hoping to justify her suspicions. She flattened her back to the case and turned to stare out at the room, checking to see if the view corresponded with the image of the room she had in her memory. The two images lined up exactly and yet, no elevator. Courtney started pulling at the trophies in the same way Duncan had, but found that every award she tried to move was bolted down.

She stepped back to glare at the packed trophy case, seriously considering going through each of the dozens of trophies to find the one that would reveal the elevator, but she was soon distracted (and disgusted) by the Degas-styled self portrait of Chris as a dancer that hung above the case. She hadn't been able to see it from inside the elevator the first time (mercifully), though she supposed she should have guessed that such a thing existed, based on the thirty or so other painted versions of Chris McLean that were spaced around the room. They were each in a different famous style. The widespread use of styles, however, rendered some of them indiscernible as portraits. The Mondrian was the one that puzzled her the most, as it was not, in any way, shape, or form, recognizable as Chris McLean.

It was a bunch of squares, for crying out loud.

Courtney recalled the Pollock-looking abstract painting Duncan had been turning in his hands when she'd reached the fourth floor balcony. "So _that's_ what's out there..." she realized. All of Chris's left over junk, everything he couldn't find room for in the overwhelming gaudiness of his apartment—it had overflowed outside and taken up residence in the easily accessible warehouse. The thought of Chris swapping out the paintings and trophies on a regular basis made her cringe.

"All right, Princess," Duncan announced from inside the closet. Courtney crossed the rest of the room just in time to see Duncan emerge in the most haphazard compilation of gaudy, brazen, pimp-esque outfit pieces she had ever seen or imagined she would ever see again. "Woman's opinion: would bang or would _not_ bang?"

"Like that's even a question," Courtney scoffed. "Are you even sure those are Chris's? It looks like you found a Bedazzler for your regular getup," she said, ending up surprised by how aggressively the intended joke came out.

"Lighten up, baby! Forget about the safety inspection!" Duncan urged, taking off his diamond-encrusted sunglasses and sliding them carefully onto Courtney's face. "You _do_ understand that we've hit 'The McLean Cave' _jackpot, _right? We can finally hit the man where it hurts:" He gestured around to the room at large. "_Everywhere_!"

Courtney furrowed her brows, taking a moment to put her apprehension into communicable terms. "Let the record show that I am for the financial and emotional ruin of Chris McLean as much as the next person," she began, pushing the sunglasses back so she could better convey herself to Duncan, "but he's going to know it was us, Duncan. We're the only contestants that know this place exists, and he _knows_ it from laundry day."

"Perfect!" Duncan agreed, running down a length of the closet that was purely multi-colored suits, yanking articles of clothing to the ground and cackling as he went.

"_No, not _perfect," Courtney said, walking briskly after him and hanging suit jackets nearly as fast as he was pulling them down. "We're talking about his personal stuff," she said, trying not to let the powder blue and cloud-patterned blazer that she was hanging distract her from her point. "He's going to get Chef-level angry if—pardon, _when_—he sees that we wrecked his penthouse. Do you understand what that means for us?"

Courtney wasn't even sure she could fathom the consequences herself. "We'd be slammed with charges for vandalism before you had time to blink! And that would be..." She looked at Duncan suddenly. "That would be _disastrous_. For you."

She had been planning to finish with something more along the lines of "problematic" or "burdensome", but it occurred to her that things would not be so mild on Duncan's side. He had gone to juvie recently—she knew that much about the trip—which meant he was almost certainly on probation of some sort. And that in turn meant he _absolutely_ could not afford another charge against him, of any nature. Pranking the interns was one thing. They didn't have an army of lawyers at their beck and call like Chris did.

Duncan hadn't been paying attention. Instead, he'd reached the end of the closet where a display of mirrors, all of different sizes and magnifying power, were set up in front of a varnished desk lined with makeup. Duncan threw himself into the throne-like chair in front of the display. "Hmm," he puzzled, happily oblivious to the dark turn Courtney's thoughts had taken. "What if I could tell you with almost absolute certainty that Chris isn't going to be back here before everyone on Playa is off the island?"

"_Almost_ isn't good enough," Courtney snapped, hanging up the last bit of strewn clothing, a green and blue striped suit that she wanted to show Heather for the sole reason that it was sure to give her a fatal heart attack. "Besides, he could slam us with a lawsuit no matter where we—!"

Duncan held his arms out placatingly. "All right. I hear you, so now you hear me."

Courtney crossed her arms and waited.

"The big finale is in two days. That's all of tonight and tomorrow, and then we head back to the island the next day."

She did the math in her head. "Yeah, that sounds right."

"So Chris is sleeping on the island tonight to set up his master plan, right? He's going to need Chef with him at all times to get everything in order, obviously, because he's useless at everything. Because of that, if he's on the island _now_ to set stuff up, you know it's crunch time. He just doesn't have time to come back!"

"He's coming to get us all for the final challenge!" Courtney reminded him, turning to deadpan. "Or don't you remember how Chef threatened us with certain death if we weren't ready at 0600 hours sharp the day after tomorrow?"

Duncan made a wrong buzzer noise, spinning to sit sideways across the throne, a position made all the more ridiculous by the fact that he was still dressed like a discoball gangster. "Wrong! _Chef's _coming to pick us up. You think Chris is going to stomach the trip to Playa and back on the duct-taped boat from hell? No way!"

Courtney cast his obnoxious outfit a sideways glance. "Okay, fine, that's all well and good, and I congratulate you on successfully thinking all the way through _one _aspect of this break-in,"she said, pulling Duncan's feathered hat off his head and going to stow it back in the closet because she simply could not stand to look at it any longer. "But you have yet to address the most pressing problem!"

"Which is...?" Duncan asked.

"Legal action!" Courtney shouted. "It doesn't matter _when_ Chris finds this mess as long as he does! He has to come back to clear out his things after the finale. Even if we're off the island, he'll sue us for vandalism, and assuming you're on probation (which you have to be), that'll send you laughing straight back into juvenile detention!"

"I don't care about that," Duncan told her, shedding the remaining articles of clothing and wandering out of the closet and back into the room in his regular attire.

"Unbelievable," Courtney mumbled, picking up the mess of glitzy clothes and moving to hang them all back up. Louder, she called after him, "Well just because you don't give a damn doesn't mean that _I _don't! I have a future to worry about, and a criminal record does not bode well for—"

Duncan whooped. "Nice! Found the liquor!"

Courtney's face paled. She dropped her armful of clothes and rushed out of the closet as she imagined a thousand different drunken Duncan scenarios, each more destructive than the last. In reality, Duncan was sitting cross legged in front of a wine cooler, which was expertly hidden underneath a trophy case of Gemmie awards engraved with _Best Reality TV Show Host_. An assortment of bottles (and strangely, a single can of tomato juice) had already been pulled out onto the floor.

"Did you hear anything I just said?!" she whisper shouted at him, coming up behind him. "Chris is—"

"Going to be back for his stuff?" Duncan finished for her. "Please. That man has never done an ounce of manual labor in his life."

He pulled out a bottle of champagne from the back of the fridge and frowned at it. "I can't believe he doesn't have a drop of hard liquor. No, actually I can believe it. I didn't want to, but here's the proof. Ah well." He turned to Courtney with the bottle in his hand. "Champagne?"

Courtney hadn't been paying attention, as she was busy picking up the other bottles Duncan had scattered across the floor. "Am I a broken record to you or something? How many times do I have to—_oh_," she said suddenly, inspecting the bottle of red wine she'd just retrieved from where it had rolled under the king-sized poster bed. She turned the bottle over and her jaw dropped. "_Oh _my god. This is a three hundred dollar bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon! From the _sixties_! _Oh my god_!"

"Really?" Duncan asked, crawling across the floor to where she sat on her heels inspecting (perhaps revering) it. "Maybe we should start with that."

He tried to grab it from her, but she stood up, holding it out of his reach, and repeated in a deadly hiss, "We can't get away with this."

Duncan smirked knowingly. "Doesn't mean we can't do it."

Courtney glared at him, gingerly walking the three hundred dollar wine back to the cooler.

"Come on, Princess!" Duncan insisted, sounding like a four year old as he got to his feet. "This is our only chance to pull the most epic revenge prank in the history of reality TV. We have been blessed by the gods of both revenge _and _prankdom, and you're going to pass this up?"

"Look, Duncan," she said calmly, putting the last bottle of liquor back in the cooler, excepting the champagne Duncan had yet to release, "there's no clean getaway from trashing Chris's room. If it's not Chris or Chef, someone else is going to be sent to clean this up."

"Like the chick interns?"

Courtney sighed in relief. He was _finally_ starting to understand. "Yes, Altitudinous and Obstreperosity will surely be in here at some point, and when they are—"

"Wait a minute..._the chick interns!_" Duncan repeated suddenly, a wicked grin fixing itself on his face. "Perfect!"

Courtney stared at him warily. "_What, _exactly, isperfect?" she asked.

"I just had the best idea," he answered, digging speedily through one of his pockets. "The answer to all our problems! We'll—wait," he stopped suddenly. "What the hell did you just call them?"

She rolled her eyes, "Duncan..."

"Seriously, was that even _English_?"

"_Duncan,_" she said more pointedly._ "_What kind of idea? What does it have to do with the interns?"

Without another word, Duncan lodged the bottle of champagne between his knees to better dig in his pockets and finally pulled out a crumpled piece of paper. He handed it to Courtney with a smirk.

"Just _what_ am I looking at?" she demanded, plucking it from his hands.

"The answer to all our problems, like I said." Duncan grinned at her. "I found it on the door of the bathroom while you were obsessing over the trophy case."

She sent him a sour look that steadfastly claimed that she was _not '_obsessing' before she she set about deciphering the scrawl. It read:

_Yo, Lady Interns:_

_Can't figure out how to use the hot tub. It was fine the other day and suddenly it's not. What? Fix and/or leave better instructions. Also, there's a crack in my chandelier. Very obvious, you'll see it. It's been bugging me_—_call a glass smith. Eh, it's an Italian chandelier, maybe call an Italian. And speaking of bugs, I found a roach (that's right, ROACH) in one of my trophies last week. I think it might still be alive. Find it and kill it_—_this is a necessity. And if this place isn't spotless by the time I get back, you're both getting blacklisted from every network in the biz. Oh, and fired. Sorry kiddos, tough love. _

_-CM_

_P.S. Something's up with my mattress. Can't sleep, please investigate. It feels like a potato, but it's not a potato. Help._

Courtney slowly lowered the note and looked up to find Duncan watching her intently. For a second, they just stared at each other.

She snorted.

"This is ridiculous!" she said, trying to contain her laughter in a futile attempt to calm down before she gave herself the hiccups again.

"And _convenient_!" Duncan added with a wink. "Don't you see how _perfect_ this is? I was going to swipe the note to keep as a souvenir. But this place has got to be _spotless _when Chris gets back, or else the blame lands on those interns. They lose everything, no questions asked, no excuses accepted!" He grabbed her shoulders. "It's literally foolproof."

She looked up at him, lips pursed, trying to see the situation from every angle. "What about the interns?" she asked, shrugging him off. "They don't deserve that."

Duncan rolled his eyes. "Like it's worse than anything else they do on a daily basis! I dunno, bake them a cakeor something. Hell, give them a bottle of Chris's wine! He won't miss it."

Courtney eyed the wine cooler. The temptation was itching at her skin now. "It is _really_ good wine..."

Duncan's eyes lit up at this would-be emission. "Exactly! So relax, Princess," he drawled jokingly, sauntering away with the champagne bottle still in hand. "Take off your shoes, ditch the Louie Veto purse, and come have a drink with me."

She had totally forgotten about the bag of hair that was still around her shoulder. If she'd been easing into the idea of trashing Chris's room, the reminder of her deal with Heather put her right back on edge.

"It's Louis _Vuitton_! And where are you going?" she shouted after him. Suddenly feeling a little sick, she hung the bag and its implications on the coatrack by the door. She didn't want to forget it, but otherwise it would be a distraction from keeping track of Duncan and—dare she think it?—participating in the slow destruction of Chris's penthouse.

Upon entering the bathroom, she found Duncan surveying the hot tub. He kicked the 'On' button with one heel, and the thing shuddered to life. "Huh. Doesn't look broken to me," he observed.

"Maybe Altitudinous and Obstreperosity already got to it," Courtney offered, busying herself by pulling out drawer after drawer of sink cabinet in order to get an idea of just how much hair gel McLean actually possessed. "In which case, your whole plan just blew up in our faces, Jesse James."

"Nah," Duncan replied. "Thetall one and the loud onehave been too busy cleaning up my _last _masterminded plan," he said, putting emphasis on the non-use of Courtney's vocabulary words.

"How'd you figure?"

"Deej and I saw them this morning going down to breakfast. They said as much, and...Oh."

"'Oh' what?" Courtney asked absentmindedly. She didn't want to lose count. Forty six bottles of hair gel. Forty seven, forty eight...

"Um, at some point in that conversation, they _might _have mentioned something about all the film footage of Playa being stored in a steel-plated vault in an undisclosed location."

Courtney's head snapped up. She narrowed her eyes. "_What?"_

Duncan rubbed the side of his head sheepishly with the hand that wasn't holding the champagne. "Yeah... so, I guess your footage was never in the prop room."

Courtney nearly threw the bottle of gel she was holding at his head, but pure shock held her back. "You couldn't have remembered this when we were in the hallway on our way to spend _hours_ in the prop room?" she shouted, realizing only a second later that she was picking a fight over her own lie.

"Would you have come with me if I had?"

"Wha—? Of coursenot," she insisted, a little too forcefully. "There would be no reason to." That would have been spending time with him by choice. And she would have avoided that, obviously.

Duncan shrugged and leisurely pulled off his shirt. "Whatever."

"What did I tell you about getting shirtless around me?" she snapped, pivoting to face the view of the ocean through the floor-to-ceiling window (which boasted a perfect view of the moon as well).It was better than ogling Duncan as he stripped down to his underwear. Or looking at the _Birth of Venus-_esque painting over the sink, featuring Chris McLean as Venus.

"You said it's strictly forbidden in your room," Duncan answered, popping the champagne bottle top after a bit of a struggle. "But in all other situations, it hugely turns you on."

"That's not even selective hearing. That's outright slander," Courtney corrected. "Also..." She peered into the hot tub, "I think I see what Chris was talking about."

"Huh?" Duncan looked down into the hot tub as well, which, despite having been running for several minutes already, hadn't filled more than a couple centimeters. He bent over to inspect the inside of the tub more closely, and, after a second, chuckled. "Can you go get me a scarf or something?"

Courtney shot him a look that hopefully said _Get it yourself!_ "So you can fix the hot tub in style?"

Duncan was already halfway out of the bathroom, and soon returned clutching a sequined purple ascot.

Courtney blinked at him. "Of all the accessories in Chris's wardrobe, you choose _that_?"

Without a word, Duncan balled up the fabric and shoved it down the open drain, and the pair watched as the hot tub began filling immediately. "Problem solved."

When the choice was either to laugh or suffer an intense migraine at the idea of Chris McLean's extreme stupidity, taking it in stride seemed like the option that would cost Courtney less in therapy bills down the line.

"Unbelievable," she said, shaking her head. "Absolutely unbelievable. I cannot wait to get the heck off this island and as far away from that man as possible."

"I'll drink to that!" Duncan toasted, perched on the edge of the now-warming tub. He took an initial swig of the champagne. "Wow, that is _fizzy."_

"Duncan, we shouldn't be drinking that," Courtney pointed out, sullenly recognizing herself as a buzzkill as she leaned against the sink counter.

"You say 'we' like you're a participant. _You _haven't drunk anything yet." He took another drink, swallowing the bubbles. Then, without testing the temperature, he slipped himself straight into the hot tub, bottle still in his fist. Courtney rolled her eyes as he sucked in a pained breath and adjusted to the steaming water. He eventually eased into a sitting position, the water to his collarbone, and went on drinking. "I, on the other hand, plan on drinking this whole thing, unless someone would like to join me in here and share the bottle," he offered, wagging his eyebrows. "For my liver?"

"The odds of me getting in that tub with you are in the negatives," she replied dryly. She held up the fancy pink cube of bubble bath soap that she'd just located on the counter to Duncan. He shook his head. She tossed it in anyway. "Seriously, you can't wait three more years and just drink legally?"

Duncan grinned around the mouth of the champagne bottle. "Two years."

"Nineteen's the legal drinking age," she reminded him.

"I know. I'm seventeen."

"Right. Even _Ezekiel_ could spot that lie," Courtney answered, rolling her eyes. "You had to be 16 to participate in Total Drama Island, no exceptions. Take it from the only human being who read the ridiculous abomination that was the TDI 'Safety' contract."

Duncan was laughing.

"What?"

"Better take another read through, darling," he chuckled, taking another pull. "It said you had to be 16 at the _start _of the competition to participate in Total Drama Island."

Courtney stared at him. "But that would mean..."

He shrugged, his grin staying in place.

Courtney set down the second cube of pink soap (the pink foamy bubbles weren't nearly at a satisfying level of humiliation for Duncan) and walked to the middle of the bathroom as questions came to her in rapid fire. "Your _birthday_ was during the show? When? Why didn't you say anything?"

Duncan almost choked on the champagne. "Are you kidding? Can you imagine what kind of 'birthday surprise' I would have gotten from Chris and Chef if they'd known? I'm just glad they never thought to check my records. Or anyone's for that matter."

There was that sick feeling in Courtney's stomach again.

Before it got too unmanageable, however, Duncan went on, "I mean, I'm sure I wasn't the only one to level up in the full eight weeks. We all dodged a bullet there."

"When was it?" she asked again, curiosity driving past her discomfort.

Duncan didn't answer right away. He took a smaller sip of champagne and, without looking at her, said in a lower voice, "It, uh, it was the day before Basic Straining."

Courtney took a few seconds to process that, and mumbled, "Oh."

She slowly walked the rest of the way to the hot tub and sat on the rim, only just out of Duncan's reach. For a moment, she struggled to find something to follow up with. Then she asked, "Well, did you get any gifts? From your parents or your friends?"

"I got you," he said without an ounce of humor in his voice.

Courtney's grip on the edge of the tub tightened into a vice. She hadn't been prepared for that, had no idea how to take it, and didn't want to believe that she'd heard him right. Duncan took another drink of champagne.

"Duncan—" she started, softly but firmly.

His eyes shot to hers. "If I had told you that the camera wasn't in the prop room, would we have turned around and never found this awesome place?"

"I don't know," she said, perhaps more honestly than she'd intended. "Maybe."

Duncan raised a brow at her, and she realized that by eschewing a fierce denial she'd practically made a confession. "I mean, I had a few other things to look for in the prop room, besides the camera."

"Like?"

"Like your subtlety," she feinted, knowing full well she couldn't share her real objective.

But Duncan didn't take offense, and merely placed the champagne bottle on the hot tub steps behind his head so he could relax further into the water. Courtney was slightly concerned to find the bottle already more empty than full. "Is it really that hard for you to admit that you actually enjoy spending time with me?"

Courtney bit the inside of her lip. She glanced around the gaudy bathroom, out to the bedroom and the warehouse she couldn't see behind it. She was half-checking for hidden cameras, making sure that if she was going to make any sort of statement, it wasn't going to be on tape. Finally, she smiled a little. "This _has_ been kind of fun..."

She jumped out of her skin as Duncan shouted out the door of the bathroom, "YOU HEAR THAT, UNIVERSE? PRINCESS HAD FUN! GET THAT IN WRITING! F! U—!"

Courtney grabbed him by his Mohawk in a panic and forced his head under the water. "Shut up! You're going to get us—!"

Duncan blindly grabbed at her arms and pulled her down with him into the near-boiling water. She surfaced, spluttering, drenched, and hissing, "Hot hot hot!"

She scrambled to get out, but Duncan had already swiped his limp Mohawk back from his eyes and grabbed her by the ankle. Tugging her back in, he said, "Admit that you enjoy my company and I'll let you go!"

Accidentally (or maybe on purpose), Courtney's other foot connected with Duncan's face, which bought her enough time to get out of his grip and the steaming tub. Duncan rubbed his jaw and waited for the inevitable backlash.

He was pleasantly surprised when Courtney started laughing breathily instead.

"Your c-company is a _horrible _influence," she said, standing and shivering, drenched and trying not to smile.

"It's a skill," he said with a cheeky grin as Courtney hugged herself tightly, still shaking and hissing, "Cold cold c-cold..." through her teeth. She considered her soaking blouse for a moment and solemnly wished it a happy afterlife, as there was no way it was surviving both Wawanakwa and a hot tub. She then eased herself back into water (at the extreme end from where Duncan sat) to fight the chilly air, sighing as her body adjusted to the heat.

Duncan wordlessly grabbed the champagne bottle from the step of the hot tub behind him and held it out to her. She reached for it, but he pulled it back before she could grasp it.

"Admit that you enjoy spending time with me," he insisted again.

"Admit that you're not as much of a bad boy as you pretend to be," she countered.

"Fine. Admit that you like me."

Courtney looked taken aback, and Duncan's breath caught. It was the moment of truth.

She started to retract her extended hand from the bottle. "I wasn't going to drink that anyway..."

"Courtney—"

"Admit that there's something in you worth liking!"

Duncan rolled his eyes. "So all our time on the island and the last three days of me proving _exactly that_ went right over your head?"

Courtney frowned. He was right. Of course he was right.

She waited a minute, staring at the light pink bubbles in the tub. "Why is it so important for me to say it?" she asked before she could talk herself out of it. "I'm sure that _whatever_ my feelings are, they've been painfully obvious to you_, _Mr. Intuitive."

"I like you," he said. And for some reason, admitting it out loud wasn't nearly as scary as he'd thought it would be. He felt strangely proud that of all the things he'd messed up, this wasn't one of them. "It would be nice to know that all my effort hasn't been for nothing."

Courtney couldn't make eye contact. "You're not my type," she said, but there was no conviction in her voice.

Duncan watched as the gears in her head spun and hoped that he'd greased them to the right conclusion.

In her mind, Courtney heard Bridgette's words breathe in the space between them. _He's _crazy _about you!_

Courtney made a sound like groan, closed her eyes, and slipped into the hot tub so that all Duncan could see was her nose up. She came back up after a second, crossed her arms and legs, took a breath, and sighed deeply.

"I've enjoyed spending this time with you Duncan," she admitted slowly.

"Because you like me?"

She glared stubbornly at him. "I'd like you more with a few chugs of champagne."

Duncan didn't budge. He placed the bottle back on the tile behind his head and cleared his throat. "Ahem. Repeat after me: I, Courtney..."

"Want to punch your spleen out."

"Because you like me."

"...Because I like you."

Duncan grinned so wide it hurt, and that was just the tip of the iceberg when it came to how he was feeling at the moment. "There. That wasn't so hard, was it?"

Courtney just glared, a little miffed that she'd been conned into such a confession by a Duncan that may or may not have been tipsy at the time. She stood up, turned, and exited the hot tub without a word.

And for one single, asphyxiating moment, Duncan feared he'd broken the camel's back—that he _had _royally messed this up and screwed himself for everything he was worth, and that Courtney was going to walk out of that bathroom and never speak to him again.

But some invisible force stopped her at the door. Then she said, "I'm opening the Cabernet. And I'm not sharing."

She left, and Duncan let out the breath he would never admit to have been holding. For the first time, he dared to hope that maybe things really _were _going to turn out in his favor.

* * *

"SOMEONE'S OPENING MY 1964 CABERNET."

"I SWEAR TO GOD, MCLEAN. If you wake me up one more time, I'm gonna maul you myself!"

"But—"

"GO THE FLAMING HELL BACK TO SLEEP!"

"I pay your salary, you big bully!"

"AND I CLEAN UP YOUR MESSES AND BURY YOUR BODIES AND COOK YOUR FOOD, MR. I'M-TOO-GOOD-FOR-MCDONALDS! _GO TO SLEEP!"_

Chris blew Chef a raspberry.

* * *

Duncan lingered in the bathtub for a few minutes, feeling surprisingly calm given what had just happened. This was very likely due to the champagne bottle he'd just finished. Yet as he dropped the empty bottle into the bubbling tub, the unsettling possibility that Courtney had taken advantage of his attempt at giving her space and outright abandoned him in the penthouse suddenly dawned on him and strongly influenced his speed in clamoring out of the hot tub. He stumbled into the room on shaky legs.

His paranoia was proved unnecessary when he found Courtney lying on the bed, wrapped in a very fluffy looking white robe that was embroidered with an ornate "_C. M._" The large, wall-mounted, flat screen television was on and playing some soap opera he'd only ever heard of in passing.

Expensive-looking, studded red cowboy boots were on her feet, the red wine (which she had confirmed to be expensive) was a third of the way empty where it sat on the bedside table next to her, and the closet she had presumably gotten the robe from was in significantly greater disarray than when he'd left it. Courtney was taking small sips from a gold, chalice-like trophy that read _Television Humanitarian of the Year_.

"You're dripping on the floor," she commented. The diamond encrusted sunglasses she'd been wearing as a headband were on her face, despite the dimness of the room.

Duncan glanced at himself. "So?" His boxers and floppy Mohawk were the only things left to drip.

Courtney jerked her head in the direction of the closet. "Go pick out a nice suit to dry yourself off on—there are plenty on the floor. Then grab the second robe. I think it's in the pile somewhere."

Duncan cast her an impressed look as he crossed to the closet. "Who are you and what did you do to the CIT? And whatever it was, can she stay that way?"

"Shut up and come drink with me." She took another sip. "This is the most glorious liquid you will ever taste in your _life_."

After rolling around on a beige Armani suit and recovering the second robe Courtney had indicated, Duncan returned with a sequined silver dress in tow.

He held it out to the brunette. "You sure you don't want to slip into something more comfortable?" he teased.

Courtney glanced at Duncan over the rim of the sunglasses, then at the outfit, and then cracked a wicked grin. "How much do you want to bet that belongs to Chef?"

Duncan looked at it again and scrunched his face up in disgust, tossing it blindly back toward the closet, though it only made it about halfway across the room. "Thanks for ruining my fantasy."

"You're welcome." Courtney threw a second chalice-like trophy at Duncan, this one boasting _Mr. Canada, Fourth Place_.

Duncan caught the solid bronze weight against his chest and held it up, placing his free hand on his heart. "Thank you, thank you. I don't know what to say. But I guess I would like to thank the Academy," he mocked, in the same terrible skater accent he'd used in the prop room. "Only three other people in Canada are as supremely douchebaggy as me, and I appreciate _each_ and _every_ one of the voters for recognizing that."

Courtney grabbed him by the sleeve of his robe, giggling. "Sit down, McLean Jr. I think the surroundings are getting to your head." She did a full roll to make room for him. When she was sitting upright again, the sunglasses were nowhere to be found.

"And I think the wine is getting to _your_ head, Princess. How strong is that drink?" Duncan plopped down on the bed, fitting into the indentation Courtney had left behind.

"It's _really _good wine," Courtney repeated, reaching over and pouring him a full trophy of Cabernet Sauvignon while he grabbed the remote from the bedside table and changed the channel. She placed the bottle back on the bedside table on a makeshift coaster of Chris's autobiography.

The first thing he passed was a hockey game, teams he wasn't the least bit interested in, but he thought to ask Courtney, "Any of your people?"

"Honestly, I only watch when Gustavsson's playing," she said over the rim of her chalice. "Besides, this game's a rerun. The exhibition season doesn't start again until September."

"You never cease to amaze me, babe," he said as he flipped past. Courtney could have fought through the red wine bliss to analyze that, but she was distracted as a commercial aired for none other than the exciting new upcoming reality series hosted by renowned television host, Chris McLean: Total Drama Island!

Courtney made Duncan spill the majority of his red wine on himself and the bed in her desperate attempt to grab the remote from him.

"NO," she stated loudly, changing the channel to an awards show. "It's bad enough the lobby only plays reruns of the episode proofs. I do NOT need to see the cut for TV version!"

"Sheesh, I was about to do that," Duncan muttered, trying to dab up the red wine off his chest with the Egyptian cotton sheets.

Courtney kept searching. They passed a Motocross exhibition, which she had to veto despite Duncan's enthusiasm for the program. One channel boasted a series about teenagers at a mall, another a series about teenagers at the beach. She was happy when she finally located a standard newscast, but Duncan evoked his own veto and grabbed the remote back from her.

"How about we see what Chris has on his DVR before we delete all of it?" he suggested, holding out his trophy for a refill. Courtney carefully obliged.

As Duncan clicked through, they saw that the cue contained a variety of programs: interviews, movies, a random spattering of television episodes with no real pattern to them. (A solid chunk of the movies seemed to be about talking cats and one was about talking dinosaurs, but that was hardly an explanation.) She was happy to note, however, that Duncan seemed just as confused. At least there wasn't an obvious big picture that had escaped her.

Finally, Duncan clicked for info on one of the films, its title involving badminton, and found that it starred none other than Chris McLean. The pair shared a glance, and Duncan pressed play without hesitation. He didn't bother to ask Courtney if she thought Chris appeared in all the programs on his DVR. After catching a glimpse of one show titled "Keep it Plain with Chris McClean", the answer was only too obvious.

After the initial credits, which featured Chris as actor, writer, _and_ producer, his narration started over a very terrible child actor running (and occasionally tripping) through a field of long grass.

"_As youngsters, we all dream of greatness. The moon. The wheel. Food. Math..." _

"Since when is math synonymous with greatness?" Courtney hissed. Duncan shushed her just in time for the punchline.

"_But I was a special kid with special dreams. Me? I dreamed of birdies."_

A badminton birdie soared across the screen, coming out of nowhere to sail over the child's head. The kid put on such a forced face of joy and wonderment that Duncan and Courtney exchanged another glance.

"Drink every time Chris is the best actor in a scene?" Duncan offered.

Courtney sighed and filled up her chalice. "It's probably going to kill us."

Duncan turned the volume up and, on a hunch, Courtney clapped twice. The lights switched off. "Here's to going out with a bang," she said, clinking trophies with Duncan.

"I wasn't kidding," Duncan told her with a grin. "Wherever you put the real Courtney, leave her there."

Courtney didn't respond. This was the real her too, wasn't it? She took an unrefined gulp of her wine.

She was finding it difficult to focus on the movie or her thoughts. They kept swinging to the wig bag she could see out of the corner of her eye, hanging over on the far side of the room. The situation was ameliorated when it occurred to her that she might start her own, private drinking game, something along the lines of _drink every time you think something you wish you hadn't._

She tried to watch Chris's terrible acting and ignore the ringing of her own words in her head. She had admitted to liking Duncan not just to herself, but to _him. _(Drink.) There wasn't anyone else there to confirm it had occurred, but even if she thoroughly denied it had ever happened like she still denied the fish cabin had ever happened (drink), admitting it once to herself made it impossible to choke it back down, at least without some severe difficulty.

Fortunately, this hadn't been filmed. There would never be any reruns sneaking up on her on cable TV. Other than the wreckage of the room, come tomorrow, there'd be no proof that anything had happened at all, and that was a comforting thought. It was his word against hers, and she could make it all disappear tomorrow if she wanted to.

Courtney wasn't sure she wanted to. (Drink.)

His eyes not leaving the television, Duncan laid the remote in between them and reached over to grab the hand she had laid across her stomach. He twined his fingers in hers and drank from the chalice in his other hand.

She found it surprisingly easy not to take a crack at his total lack of subtlety. In fact, if he wasn't going to mention it, she wouldn't either. She couldn't tell if the alcohol was taking care of her inhibitions or if they were simply gone for good.

She drank. And then she squeezed his hand.

* * *

"_You must do this, Little Jimmy," _Chris was saying on the television. "_You must do this for The Flipper. For you're all I have, Little Jimmy. You're all The Flipper has."_

The scene then cut to show Chris crying, no doubt prompted by some artificial means, as the child stared at him blankly. Another birdie flew across the sky in super slow motion as the credits began to roll.

"Ugh, drink," Courtney said, tipping back the second empty bottle of red wine. "Duncan? I said drink. I think it might actually be over this time." They'd been faked out more than once over the course of the film; there had been a few too many "climaxes".

Courtney set the empty bottle down on the bedside, and clapped the overhead lights back to life. She then took a few breaths to evaluate her state of mind. She'd gone from tipsy to outright drunk near the workout montage of the film—a process that had been fast-tracked by both her shared and private drinking game. That made her _very_ glad there were no cameras around, though she was near positive her peers could've heard her, uproariously drunk as she was, throughout all three floors of Playa.

A second bottle of wine had become necessary at that time, but that had been a few terrible monologues ago. She'd been taking it easy since then, faking a few of her drinks, and estimated that she was back to being just tipsy.

As was evidenced by the now-empty chalice in his loose grip, Duncan had picked up the slack and consequently drunk himself into a coma.

"Duncan!" she called, shaking him. When that didn't work, she kneed him in the side.

He came to slowly. "Urgh...What? What did I miss?"

"I finished a third bottle of wine by myself and did a strip tease while you were passed out."

Duncan cursed himself and rolled over onto his back. "Is that god-awful thing over?" he moaned.

"Yes. One of us survived. One of us did not."

"You have remarkable tolerance," he mumbled, stretching where he lay and cracking his back.

"Oooh, a four syllable word," she teased. "You really _are_ drunk."

His eyes screwed shut to the flickering TV credits. "Not drunk, just tired," he insisted groggily.

Courtney smirked. "Don't tell me you're a sleepy drunk. _You_ of all people! I thought you'd be belligerent for sure. I was willing to bet you'd pick a fight with the bedside lamp."

He yawned without shame. "Sorry to disappoint. The only fights I pick are the ones I'm sober enough to win."

"Is that what got you sent to juvie?"

She'd blurted out the question more naturally than she'd thought possible. It could have been because she needed a new distraction from the bag in the corner, or perhaps because she was just incredibly curious and not thinking quite as much as usual. Maybe a little of both. She wasn't quite sober enough to want to analyze it.

"What?" he asked, throwing an arm lazily over his eyes.

"What did you go to juvie for?" she rephrased. "You can tell me. There's no one else here to know, and I won't tell. Heck," she lied, picking up Duncan's trophy and putting it on the bedside table, "I probably won't even remember it in the morning."

She was trying very hard to be convincing, but when she looked back at him, he was just staring at her. Her stomach dropped. _He knows, _her mind whispered in a panic. _He knows what you did._

But when Duncan spoke, drunk and relaxed and at ease, the only time she could reasonably expect an honest response out of him if _ever_, his answer was none of the things Courtney had prepared herself for.

"I don't want you to think of me like that," he said, quietly but clearly. "I don't want you to...to think the worst of me."

Her curiosity wrestled to beat down the guilt that was welling up in her chest. She scooted closer to him, closer than they were already. "But I won't tell anyone. I promise."

Duncan looked at her sadly, like she was a child and he had to tell her that her dog had died. "This isn't about secrecy. I can tell Heather and Gwen and Owen and Harold, even Chris if I have to, but—"

He paused. Then he turned over so he didn't have to face her.

"I don't want you to know. Because it's you."

After a moment, she said, "Okay," but she what she really wished she could have said was "I'm sorry" instead. Sorry because she was definitely going to get the information from Heather now. Sorry because she was going to find out anyway, because the curiosity was eating her alive, and if she was going to continue on this path of interaction with Duncan, then (she was sorry) she _absolutely _had to know what had landed him in juvie.

Duncan continued his roll onto his stomach, then to his back, to his stomach again, and on and on until he had travelled the length of the bed and dropped like a sack of stones to the floor. "Ow."

"I'm going to go see if my clothes are dry," Courtney said, changing the subject and getting up with far more grace. She walked to the closet as Duncan brushed himself off and wandered into the bathroom.

Her resolution was still settling uncomfortably in her mind as she searched through the pile of clothes that she'd left on the floor, both Chris's and her own, when a cry of surprise from the bathroom interrupted her.

She abandoned the closet and rushed to the bathroom door. "Duncan? Are you oka—?"

The door jerked open, and Courtney shrieked as she was doused in a powerful spray of ice water.

Duncan stood holding the removable shower head in one hand, grinning. "All good and sober?" he asked cheerfully.

"What happened to you being a sleepy drunk?!" she shrieked, rooted to the spot as the water ran down her appendages and to the floor.

"It comes and goes," Duncan cackled, holding the nozzle like a gun and preparing for another round.

For the second time that day, Courtney tackled him to the ground before he could get his kicks. Wrestling the shower head out of his grip, she put a knee to his gut and sprayed him until she felt she had achieved a sufficient revenge.

"All good and sober?" she repeated back with a sweet smile. Duncan sputtered in response as she disconnected the shower head and tossed it away before stalking back to the closet, fully awake, drenched again, and surprisingly more okay with it than she thought she'd be.

Once they were both dressed and (sort of) dry and Courtney had (resolutely) collected her bag, it occurred to her that the front door might be rigged with some sort of alarm. She decided she'd try to take them back the roundabout way they'd come, but while she was busy trying to remember which trophy Duncan had pulled to get them there, Duncan had (giddily) grabbed a handful of Chris's trophies and a few of his manageably sized paintings and dumped them all in the hot tub.

It was while Duncan was grabbing a Juno Award to toss, engraved "Best New Artist, _Fametown_", however, that he found yet another secret entrance. The moveable bookcase slid aside to reveal what looked like the mouth of a slide that could have lead to anywhere.

"Ladies first," Duncan offered.

"Chivalry isn't dead; it's just an alcoholic," Courtney muttered as she peered down the length of the slide to an end she couldn't see. It did look faster and less time-consuming than roaming through the dark, camera-filled hallways. But then again, jumping out the fourth floor window was also a faster way to get to the ground floor. That didn't make it a good idea.

"Ten bucks says you land in a pool."

"Why would Chris have a slide into a pool when he has a huge hot tub in his bathroom?"

Duncan considered this drowsily. "Good point. I retract my bet."

Courtney rolled her eyes as she sat on the edge of the slide, pushing off before Duncan got any bright ideas about pushing her himself, and before she could put a value judgement on the reckless act.

The trip down was long and just the slightest bit terrifying, and it didn't drop her in the pool, or any body of water in fact; it landed in a secluded bit of property on an inflatable mattress that cushioned the landing nicely. When Courtney straightened up and got out of the way of Duncan's touchdown, which was surely close behind, she realized they were mere meters away from the regular Poolside area.

Huh. So _that_ was how Chris appeared and disappeared at the Poolsides so quickly.

The sky was starting to lighten and was dusting the clouds in pastels. "Sun's rising," Courtney informed Duncan when he tumbled noisily down the chute. "We've missed the whole night."

"_You_ missed the whole night," Duncan corrected as he clambered to his feet. "I fit in a nice power nap between the first big match and the finale."

"Yeah, yeah. Way to rub it in," she said, coming around to nudge him in the direction of the doors.

"Missed a strip tease for it too," he mumbled.

There were still cameras to dodge on the Poolside deck, but nowhere near as many as the prop room hallway. Despite being in some brand of stupor (Courtney _still_ couldn't get a clear read on his level of inebriation), Duncan was able to dodge around the pattern, leaving Courtney to mimic him from behind.

They made it to Courtney's room through the employee staircase without incident. Having arrived at the end of their night, they stood outside her door for a few moments.

Duncan teetered, unbalanced. "Well this was fun. Let's do it again sometime soon."

"Yeah, let's not," Courtney sighed. Then, remembering something, she held out her hand firmly.

Duncan stared at it with as much clarity as the child actor in the movie they'd just watched. "What?" he asked.

"My room key," she said. "Hand it over."

He was apparently still sober enough to grin and pull it out. "This key?"

She tried to grab it, but he held it over his head. "Uh-uh. What's the magic word?'

Courtney rolled her eyes and chuckled. He was still Duncan. No amount of champagne or midnight confessions could change that.

And he was crazy about her. And he didn't want to tell her why he went to juvie because he didn't want her to know he was really a bad boy because he didn't want to be.

"Duncan..."

She'd only ever noticed his stubble once before. She'd forgotten about it entirely up until she put her hands on his jawline.

He grinned at her sleepily.

"You're such an idiot," she murmured.

Then she kissed him.

He tasted like 1964 Cabernet Sauvignon, which had suddenly become the _second_ best thing she'd ever tasted.

Duncan kissed her back readily, like he'd been expecting it, or at the very least eagerly hoping for it. He held her tightly by the shoulders. He held her like that for a long while.

Finally, she parted their lips and, seizing what was possibly her only chance, slipped the key out from where it hung off one of his fingers. She turned, opened her door, and disappeared inside her room.

It took her a moment to find anything to say, but an adequate follow-up came to her eventually. "Your creeping privileges have been officially revoked," she stated breathily from inside.

"That's okay," he replied smoothly, sounding a little out of breath himself. "I plan on getting myself invited."

"Go to sleep, you Neanderthal."

"As you wish, Princess." She heard the smile in his voice that accompanied the lighter thud of his Converse down the hallway.

Courtney shut her blinds, threw off her damp clothes, and tossed the bag of hair under her bed, determined to banish it from her thoughts, at least until morning. Routine dictated that she then go brush her teeth, but on this night full of firsts (seconds?) she decided to forget hygiene just this one night and got immediately in bed.

Besides, she decided she liked the taste of the red wine on her tongue: it was oaky, medium-bodied with a smooth and easy finish. It had aromas of bell pepper and flavors of vanilla and fresh berry, and, if you had a very refined palate (which she did), you could taste just a _hint_ of delinquent underneath.

* * *

Yes, friends. That really happened.

Also, let it be said that we do not in any way condone or endorse underage drinking. However, we cannot deny the unfortunate fact that it does happen in some cases.

* * *

**From strayphoenix: **If you haven't figured out why this is my favorite chapter to date, you should really re-read those last few paragraphs ;). I was SO EXCITED for this chapter actually, that I wrote an entire 7000 word first draft in one 7 hour sitting. Panera had to kick me out. They thought I was homeless. No joke.

Speaking of jokes! This is a conversation Rina and I actually had over text the other day:

stray: arrrgh. vacation makes writing progress so slooooooowwwww

Rina: but, vacation!

stray: NO EXCUSES

If you're wondering why I'm not addressing anything in the chapter, it's because I already know what each and every review is going to comment on. But! Just in case you made it this far down into the author's note, story's nowhere near over yet, folks!

One kiss does not a Happily Ever After make, especially not on Playa when the TDI finale is only a day away and Courtney still needs to carry out her half of the bargain with Heather if she ever wants to know Duncan's true backstory. Stay tuned for the rest of this ride! It's a DOOZY.

**From Contemperina**: Are you guys freaking out? Because we were freaking out writing this, editing this, and now we are freaking out as we post. Hopefully you've enjoyed this ride as much as we have and thought this was a worthy treatment of thei pair's second kiss (whaaaaaat?).

HOWEVER, as stray said, this story is certainly not over. There is much to read for still, so stay tuned for the next post, coming up soon!

* * *

Thanks for reading! Please review (:


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